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Contents.
Genealogical Tables
List of Illustrations.
The Kings of Portugal
Index.
(etext transcriber's note) |
Stories of the Nations
A Series of Historical Studies intended to present in graphic
narratives the stories of the different nations that have attained
prominence in history.
In the story form the current of each national life is distinctly
indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy periods and episodes are
presented for the reader in their philosophical relations to each other
as well as to universal history.
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FOR FULL LIST SEE END OF THIS VOLUME{i}
{ii}
PORTUGAL
{iii}
{iv}
PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL.
(From an Engraving of the Miniature in the MS. of “The Discovery of
Guinea,” 1448.)
{v}
THE STORY OF THE NATIONS
PORTUGAL
BY
H. MORSE STEPHENS
BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD; OXFORD UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECTURER
AUTHOR OF “A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION”
——
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
1903
{vi}
Copyright, 1891
BY
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
By T. Fisher Unwin
Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
{vii}
PREFACE.
THIS volume is written on a different plan to that adopted in most of
the volumes in the same Series which have preceded it, and attempts to
give a short chronological history of Portugal. An episodical history,
though more interesting than a consecutive narrative, in that it treats
only of the most striking events, demands from the reader a groundwork
of accurate knowledge. This is not given with regard to the history of
Portugal in any book in the English language with which the author is
acquainted. Dunham, who combined a history of Portugal with that of
Spain, in five volumes published in Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopædia
between 1838 and 1843, based his account on Vertot’s Révolutions de
Portugal, first printed at Paris in 1678, and modern English standard
books of reference still make use of Dunham, and contain the old
blunders of identifying Portugal with Lusitania, recognizing the
fictitious Cortes of Lamego in 1143, regarding the victory of Ourique as
a “prodigious” victory, &c., &c. Since the time of Dunham, a few books
have been published in England bearing{viii} on special periods of Portuguese
history, such as the lives of the Marquis of Pombal and the Duke of
Saldanha, published by John Smith, Count of Carnota, and two volumes of
a History of Portugal, by E. MacMurdo, and which is still in progress;
but there exists no book containing a complete and trustworthy history
to which students may be referred.
Yet within the last fifty years the history of Portugal has been
entirely rewritten. The modern school of historians, which derived its
first impulsion from Niebuhr and Ranke, found a brilliant representative
in Alexandra Herculano, who saw that history could only be written after
a careful examination of contemporary documents, and who in his
Historia de Portugal, published between 1848 and 1853, swept away much
of the cobweb of legend which had enveloped the early history of his
country. Herculano undoubtedly owed much to Heinrich Schäfer, who wrote
the history of Portugal in the Geschichte der Europäischen Staaten
edited by Heeren and Ukert; but he went much further than Schäfer, and
the history of the latter is now quite out of date. The works of
Herculano and his followers have quite superseded the histories of
Lemos, Sousa Monteiro, and J. F. Pereira, which are mentioned here only
as books to be avoided by the historical student.
It is not intended to give a complete bibliography of the works of the
modern Portuguese school of historians, but the author thinks it worth
while to refer to some of the books which he has used, and which can be
recommended as trustworthy guides to those who may wish to examine
further into the history of{ix} Portugal. First with regard to documents,
the Colleccão de Livros ineditos de Historia Portugueza, edited by
Correa da Serra, and the Colleccão dos principaes Auctores da Historia
Portugueza, and the Portugalliæ Monumenta Historica, edited by
Herculano, contain the best editions of the old chroniclers; while
perpetual reference must be made to the Quadro elementar das Relacões
politicas e diplomaticas de Portugal of the Viscount of Santarem, which
was continued by Rebello da Silva as the Corpo diplomatico Portuguez,
and contains in thirty-six volumes, published between 1856 and 1878, the
“fœdera” of Portugal up to 1640, and to the Colleccão dos Actos
publicos celebrados entre a Coroa de Portugal e as mais Potencias desde
1640 até o Presente, edited by J. Ferreira Borges de Castro and J.
Judice Biker. As consecutive narratives, the short history of J. P.
Oliveira Martins, and the illustrated popular history, which is the
joint work of Antonio Ennes, B. Ribeiro, E. Vidal, G. Lobato, L.
Cordeiro and Pinheiro Chagas may be read; but it would be far better to
study the more scientific works of Alexander Herculano, Historia de
Portugal, 4 vols., 1848-53, which goes to 1279, and Da Origem e
Estabelecimento da Inquisicão em Portugal, 2 vols., 1854-57; the
Historia de Portugal pendente XVI. e XVII. Seculos, 5 vols., 1860-71,
by L. A. Rebello da Silva; Historia de Portugal desde os Fins do XVII.
Seculo até 1814, 1874, by J. M. Latino Coelho; and Historia da Guerra
civil e do Estabelecimento do Governo Parlamentar em Portugal, 6 vols.,
1866-1881, by S. J. da Luz Soriano. Among special books of interest in
different languages may be noted Memorias para a Historia e Theoria
das{x} Cortes, by the Viscount of Santarem, 1828; Las Rainhas de
Portugal, by F. da Fonseca Benevides, 1878; History of the Revolutions
of Portugal from the Foundation of that Kingdom to the year 1677, with
the Letters of Sir R. Southwell during his Embassy there to the Duke of
Ormond, by R. Carte, 1740; Les Faux Don Sébastien, by Miguel Martins
d’Antas, Paris, 1866; Le Chevalier de Jant; Rélations de la France
avec le Portugal au temps de Mazarin, by Jules Tessier, Paris, 1877;
and Life of Prince Henry the Navigator, by R. H. Major, 1868. Coming
to the history of the present century, the great History of the
Peninsular War, by Gen. Sir W. F. P. Napier, is justly famous in all
countries, and it is so well known that only a very few pages have been
devoted to the subject in the present volume; but reference has also
been made to the Historia geral da Invasão dos Francezes em Portugal,
by Accursio das Neves; to the Excerptos Historicos relativos a Guerra
denominada da Peninsula, e as anteriores de 1801, de Roussillon e
Cataluna, by Claudio de Chaby; and to the Wellington Despatches. On
the history of the civil wars the best authorities are Memorias para a
Historia do Tempo que duron a Usurpacão de Dom Miguel, by J. L. Freire
de Carvalho, 1841-43; Historia de Liberdade em Portugal, by J. G. de
Barros e Cunha, 1869; Despachos e Correspondencia do Duque de
Palmella, 1851-54; Correspondencia Official de Conde de Carneira com o
Duque de Palmella, 1874; Memoirs of the Duke of Saldanha, by the
Count of Carnota; The Wars of Succession in France and Portugal, by
William Bollaert, vol. i., 1870, and The Civil War in Portugal, and the
Siege of Oporto, by a British Officer of Hussars{xi} [Colonel Badcock],
1835. Much valuable historical material is also buried in magazines and
the transactions of learned societies, and special reference may be made
to two particularly interesting essays in the Annaes des Sciencias
Moraes e Politicas, Dom João II. e a Nobreza, by Rebello da Silva, and
Apontamentos para a Historia da Conquista de Portugal por Filippe II.,
by A. P. Lopes de Mendonça.
Apart from Portuguese history, Portuguese literature deserves to be
studied. Several pages have been devoted to it in the present volume,
and with regard to the early poetry of the troubadour epoch, the author
desires to express his obligations to the learned introductions of
Theophilo Braga, himself a poet of no mean rank, to his Antologia
Portugueza, 1876, and his Cancioneiro Portuguez, 1878. The glory of
Portuguese literature is Camoens, and it is fortunate that his great
poem, The Lusiads, has found an adequate translator at last. I know of
no translation of any classic which can compare with Sir Richard
Burton’s translation of The Lusiads. By his profound knowledge of the
Portuguese character no less than of the Portuguese language, by his
intimate acquaintance with the places which Camoens describes, and,
above all, by his temperament, which resembled that of the
conquistador-poet, Sir Richard Burton was fitted to reproduce for the
English people the thoughts and words of the greatest Portuguese poet.
Every lover of Camoens, like every lover of Homer, has been tempted to
translate his mighty poem; but, at last, so it seems to me, the work of
translation has been done once for all for Camoens by the loving labour
of Sir{xii} Richard Burton, and Englishmen may read The Lusiads,
reproduced faithfully into their own language, alike in spirit and in
words. That the life-poem of a hero of the sixteenth century should have
been worthily translated by a hero of the nineteenth, seems to me a
circumstance of which all lovers of literature in both England and
Portugal should be glad and proud.
In conclusion, the writing of this volume has been to the author a
labour of love. In the intervals of a minute study of the history of
another period, that of the French Revolution, he has turned with
pleasure to the task of writing this “Story of Portugal.” He has not
been able to work at original authorities as thoroughly as he might
wish, owing to the absorbing nature of his more important work, but he
hopes the time may come when he will be enabled to spend a few years
among the Archives at the Torre del Tombo, and investigate more
thoroughly the history of the early relations of England and Portugal,
and of the Portuguese in the East. Is he too presumptuous also in hoping
that a clearer knowledge of the old and tried friendship of the English
nation with the Portuguese may influence in some degree the attitude
taken by a portion of the English people towards their ancient ally in
the dispute with regard to the extent of the Portuguese possessions in
Africa?
H. MORSE STEPHENS.
Oxford,
March 1, 1891.
{xiii}
CONTENTS.
| I. |
| PAGE |
| Early History | 1 |
| The importance of, and features of interest in, Portuguese
history—Greeks, Phœnicians, and Romans—Portugal is not
the ancient Lusitania—The influence of Rome—The Visigoths—The
rule of the Mohammedans—The Christian princes
commence their incursions—Ferdinand “the Great” captures
Coimbra—The successes of the Almoravides—The formation
of the County of Portugal. |
| II. |
| The County of Portugal—Donna Theresa | 20 |
| The character of Henry of Burgundy, first Count of Portugal—The
Countess Theresa—Her policy—Count Henry fights in
Spain—His death—The regency of Theresa—The nobility and
the bishops—The wars of Theresa—Theresa styled Infanta—The
battle of S. Mamede—Theresa introduces the religious
military orders—Death of Donna Theresa. |
| III. |
| Portugal becomes a Kingdom—The Reign of
Affonso Henriques | 34 |
| The youth of Affonso Henriques—The heroism of Egas Moniz{xiv}—The
Gallician wars—Affonso assumes the title of king—He
is recognized by the Pope—The Treaty of Zamora—Independence
won by the Gallician wars—The state of the Moors—Affonso’s
first war with the Moors—The victory of Ourique—Legends
concerning it—The wars of conquest—The capture
of Santarem and Lisbon—The assistance of the English crusaders—Capture
of Alcacer do Sal—The Treaty of Cella Nova—Affonso
taken prisoner at Badajoz—Truce with the Moors—Further
fighting—Great victory over the Moors at Santarem—Death
of Affonso Henriques. |
| IV. |
| Portugal attains its European Limits | 60 |
| The reign of Sancho I.—The successes of the Moors—Sancho’s
internal administration—His quarrels with the clergy
and the Pope—The marriages of his children—The reign of
Affonso II. “the Fat”—Recapture of Alcacer do Sal and
defeat of the Moors—Arrival of the friars—The reign of
Sancho II.—The capture of Elvas—His quarrels with his
bishops—He is deposed by the Pope—The reign of Affonso
III.—His conquest of the Algarves—His alliance with his
people—The Cortes—His death. |
| V. |
| The Consolidation of Portugal | 85 |
| The reign of Diniz—The Order of Christ—His internal
administration—His encouragement of literature—Portuguese
poetry—Stanzas of Camoens on Diniz—Affonso IV. “the
Brave”—The victory of the Salado—Friendship between
Portugal and England—The murder of Ines de Castro—Pedro
“the Severe”—Ferdinand “the Handsome”—The Queen
Leonor—Riot in Lisbon—War between Portugal and Castile—The
wickedness of the queen—The Treaty of Salvaterra—The
Portuguese revolt under Dom John of Aviz—The defence
of Lisbon—Dom John elected king—The victory of Aljubarrota—The
Treaty of Windsor and alliance with John of Gaunt—Peace
with Castile.{xv} |
| VI. |
| Portugal during the Age of Exploration | 115 |
| The policy of John “the Great”—The alliance with England—His
internal administration—The power of the feudal
nobility—The capture of Ceuta—The king’s sons—The growth
of Portuguese literature—The reign of Duarte or Edward—The
expedition to Tangier—The “Constant Prince”—Dispute
as to the regency—Dom Pedro regent—Overthrown at battle
of Alfarrobeira—The reign of Affonso V. “the African”—His
African expeditions—War with Castile—Defeated at Toro—His
patronage of literature. |
| VII. |
| The Portuguese Explorers | 140 |
| Prince Henry “the Navigator” and his work—The importance
of a direct route to India—The discovery of Madeira—The
story of Robert Machin—The discovery of the Azores—Cape
Bojador passed—The commencement of the African slave
trade—The discovery of Guinea, and of Cape Verde—The
voyage of Cadamosto—Death of Prince Henry—The equator
crossed—Discovery of the Congo—The Cape of Good Hope
reached and doubled. |
| VIII. |
| The Heroic Age of Portugal | 158 |
| John II. “the Perfect”—Overthrow of the power of the
nobility—His foreign policy—Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain—Friendship
with England—His encouragement of exploration—His
court—Emmanuel “the Fortunate”—Expulsion of
the Jews—His policy and marriages—The discoveries of the
Portuguese—The seeds of decline—John III.—His policy—The
abandonment of the ports in Morocco—Corruption at
Court—Rapid depopulation of Portugal—The Inquisition and
the Jesuits—Death John III.{xvi} |
| IX. |
| The Portuguese in India and the Eastern Seas | 185 |
| Romantic interest of the story of the Portuguese in India—The
voyage of Vasco da Gama—State of India, when he
reached it—His return—The voyage of Cabral and the victory
of Pacheco—The viceroyalties of Almeida and Alboquerque—The
capture of Goa—Alboquerque establishes a factory at
Malacca and attacks Aden—The policy of Alboquerque—The
rule of his successors—Their policy and the nature of their
government—The Christian missionaries—S. Francis Xavier—The
viceroyalty of Castro—His victory at Diu—The successors
of Castro—The settlements in South-east Africa—The
Portuguese at Malacca and in the Spice Islands—Their communications
with China and Japan—The career of Mendes
Pinto—Extraordinary energy of the Portuguese in Asia. |
| X. |
| The Portuguese in Brazil | 220 |
| Importance of Brazil to Portugal—Cabral’s discovery of the
country—Spain abandons its claims—The aboriginal inhabitants—Early
days—The first settlers and their government—Emigration
from Portugal—The viceroyalty of Thomas de
Sousa—The Jesuits and their work—The government of Duarte
da Costa—Failure of the French Huguenots to establish
themselves in Brazil. |
| XI. |
| The last Kings of the House of Aviz—Dom
Sebastian and the Cardinal Henry | 236 |
| The rapid decay of Portugal—The accession of Sebastian—The
regency of Queen Catherine—The regency of the Cardinal
Henry—The character of Sebastian—His crusading ardour—The
Portuguese in India—Athaide’s defence of Goa—Sebastian
determines to invade Morocco—His applications for foreign
aid—His preparations—He lands in Africa—The defeat of
Alcacer Quibir—The death of Sebastian—The reign of the
Cardinal Henry.{xvii} |
| XII. |
| Portuguese Literature—Camoens | 259 |
| The “Golden Age” of Portuguese literature—The revival of
classical learning—History of the University of Coimbra—Gil
Vicente—Bernardim Ribeiro—Sá de Miranda—Ferreira—Camoens—His
life—His “Lusiads”—João de Barros—Other
writers—Decline of Portuguese literature. |
| XIII. |
| The Sixty Years’ Captivity | 278 |
| The claimants to the Portuguese crown—Defeat of the Prior
of Crato—Philip II. of Spain recognized as king of Portugal—Further
efforts and death of the Prior of Crato—The false
Dom Sebastians—The government of Spain and its disastrous
results—The reign of Philip II.—The Portuguese in Asia—The
conquest of Kandy—The missionaries and the Inquisition—The
Dutch and the English overthrow the Portuguese power
in Asia—The Dutch in Brazil—Count Maurice of Nassau—Results
of the rule of Spain. |
| XIV. |
| The Revolution of 1640 | 300 |
| Discontent of the Portuguese at the rule of the Spaniards—Fostered
by Richelieu—The Duke and Duchess of Braganza—The
Duchess of Mantua, and her advisers—Preparations for
revolt—The leaders—The Revolution of December 1, 1640—The
Duke of Braganza crowned as John IV.—He obtains help
from Holland and France—The “Caminha” conspiracy—The
victory of Montijo—Brazil expels the Dutch—War with
Holland—The King despairs, and offers to abdicate—Treaty
of alliance with France—Death of John IV. |
| XV. |
| The English Alliance | 326 |
| The Queen as Regent—Schomberg organizes the army—Victory
of Elvas—Marriage of Charles II. of England to Catherine of{xviii}
Braganza—Affonso VI. declares himself of age—The Ministry
of Castel Melhor—Victories of the Portuguese—Court revolution—Dom
Pedro regent—Peace with Spain—The rule of Pedro II.
as Regent and King—His foreign policy—Death of Charles II.
of Spain—The Methuen treaty and its results—The war of the
Spanish Succession—Death of Pedro II.—The decline of the
Portuguese power in Asia—Prosperity of Brazil—Discovery
of gold there. |
| XVI. |
| Portugal in the Eighteenth Century—The
Marquis of Pombal | 349 |
| Portugal in the eighteenth century—Accession of John V.—End
of the war of the Spanish Succession—Peace policy of
the King—His long and prosperous reign—Accession of
Joseph—Early career of Pombal—The earthquake of Lisbon—Pombal,
prime minister—He attacks the Jesuits—The
“Tavora” plot—Banishment of the Jesuits—Short war with
Spain—Suppression of the Jesuits—Death of Joseph—The
administration of Pombal—His great reforms—Accession of
Pedro III. and Maria I.—Disgrace of Pombal—The reign of
Pedro and Maria—Death of Pedro III.—The Portuguese in
India in the eighteenth century—The prosperity of Brazil—Discovery
of diamonds there—Literature in the eighteenth
century. |
| XVII. |
| The Era of the French Revolution—The
Peninsular War | 382 |
| The French Revolution—Persecution of sympathisers with it
in Portugal—Dom John sends help to Spain in the war against
France—Deserted by Spain at the Treaty of Basle—The
Treaty of San Ildefonso—Alliance with England—Dom John
declared Regent—The war of 1801—The Treaty of Badajoz—Policy
of Napoleon against Portugal—Mission of Lannes—Treaty
of Fontainebleau, 1807—Junot invades Portugal—The
Regent escapes to Brazil—Junot’s rule—Forms the Portuguese
Legion—General insurrection against him—The Portuguese
appeal to England—Victory of Vimeiro and Convention of{xix}
Cintra—Soult occupies Oporto—Expelled by Wellesley—Beresford
reorganizes the Portuguese army—The Regency—Masséna
before Torres Vedras—The Portuguese troops during
the Peninsular War—Conclusion of the War—Death of Queen
Maria Francisca. |
| XVIII. |
| Modern Portugal—Civil Wars and the Establishment
of Parliamentary Government | 409 |
| John IV. his queen, and his sons Dom Pedro and Dom
Miguel—Oporto and Lisbon revolt against the Regency—The
Constitution of 1821—Brazil declares itself independent—The
Constitution abrogated—Death of John VI.—The influence of
the army—The Charter of 1826—Pedro IV. abdicates in favour
of Maria II.—Dom Miguel, Regent—Elected King—Reign
of Dom Miguel—The “Miguelite” war, 1830-34—Convention
of Evora Monte—Reign of Maria da Gloria—Civil wars and
“pronunciamentos”—Era of peaceful parliamentary government—Reigns
of Pedro V. and Luis I.—Accession of Carlos I.—The
Portuguese settlements in Africa—Material prosperity—The
literary revival—Lessons taught by the history of
Portugal—Conclusion. |
| Index:
A,
B,
C,
D,
E,
F,
G,
H,
I,
J,
K,
L,
M,
N,
O,
P,
Q,
R,
S,
T,
U,
V,
W,
Y,
Z | 433 |
Genealogical Tables—
{xx}
{xxi}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
| PAGE |
| PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL | Frontispiece |
| SPECIMEN OF ROMAN ARCHITECTURE | 9 |
| VIEW OF OPORTO AND VILLA NOVA FROM THE SERRA
CONVENT | 16 |
| COIMBRA (PRESENT STATE) | 27 |
| A VIEW OF THE ANCIENT MOORISH BATH AT CINTRA | 42 |
| ARCH OF THE WESTERN ENTRANCE TO AN OLD CHAPEL
AT LEIRIA | 47 |
| VIEW OF LISBON | 50 |
| CONVENTO DE CHRISTO AT THOMAR | 61 |
| PRINCIPAL FAÇADE OF THE IGREGA DOS JERONYMOS
AT BELEM (PRESENT STATE) | 68 |
| GATE AND WINDOW OF THE MONASTERY OF BELEM | 77 |
| FAÇADE OF LISBON CATHEDRAL | 82 |
| INES DE CASTRO | 96 |
| VIEW OF THE PALACE AT LISBON | 108 |
| TWO SIDES OF THE ROYAL CHAPEL OF THE MONASTERY
OF BATALHA (PRESENT STATE) | 112 |
| KING JOHN THE GREAT | 116 |
| QUEEN PHILIPPA | 123 |
| PORTUGUESE GOLD COINS | 136, 137 |
| ST. SALVADOR IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY | 142 |
| STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY{xxii} | 152 |
| TOMB OF PRINCE HENRY | 155 |
| CHART OF GOA | 166 |
| VASCO DA GAMA | 168 |
| ALBOQUERQUE, FROM THE SLOANE MS. | 194 |
| ALBOQUERQUE, FROM AN ENGRAVING BY SILVA | 202 |
| DOM JOÃO CASTRO | 210 |
| PROCESSION OF AN AUTO DA FÉ | 232 |
| LISBON IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY | 239 |
| VIEW UP THE DOURO TOWARDS OPORTO | 250 |
| LUIS DE CAMOENS | 269 |
| JOÃO DE BARROS | 275 |
| PHILIP II. | 282 |
| FIGURES OF MEN AT AN AUTO DA FÉ | 293 |
| PORTUGUESE GENTLEMEN | 310 |
| JOHN IV. | 322 |
| CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA | 328 |
| PEDRO II. | 335 |
| OPORTO (PRESENT STATE) | 339 |
| SPECIMENS OF PORTUGUESE AND COPPER COINS | 344, 345 |
| THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL | 356 |
| BULL FIGHT | 366 |
| A PORTUGUESE MERCHANT, WITH HIS WIFE AND MAID-SERVANT | 384 |
| MARSHAL JUNOT, DUKE OF ABRANTES | 394 |
| PORTUGUESE PEASANTS | 398 |
| A FEMALE PEASANT FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF
CALDAS DA RAINHA | 403 |
[A number of the views illustrating Portuguese scenery are taken from
photographs; others are copied from W. M. Kinsey’s “Portugal
Illustrated,” London, 1829; other volumes which have supplied
illustrations are “Les Royaumes d’Espagne et Portugal,” La Haye, 1720;
Murphy’s “Travels in Portugal,” 1798; Major’s “Prince Henry the
Navigator,” &c., &c.]
{xxiii}
THE KINGS OF PORTUGAL
| The House of Burgundy. |
| DATE |
| Affonso Henriques (Count of Portugal 1114), King | 1140 |
| Sancho I. “the City-Builder” | 1185 |
| Affonso II. “the Fat” | 1211 |
| Sancho II. | 1223 |
| Affonso III. “of Boulogne” (Defender of the Realm 1246) | 1248 |
| Diniz “the Labourer” | 1279 |
| Affonso IV. “the Brave” | 1325 |
| Pedro I. “the Severe” | 1357 |
| Ferdinand “the Handsome” | 1367 |
| |
| The House of Aviz. |
| John I. “the Great” | 1385 |
| Edward | 1433 |
| Affonso V. “the African” | 1438 |
| John II. “the Perfect” | 1481 |
| Emmanuel “the Fortunate” | 1495 |
| John III. | 1521 |
| Sebastian | 1557 |
| Henry “the Cardinal” | 1578 |
| The Spanish Dominion. |
| Philip I. (Philip II. of Spain) | 1580 |
| Philip II. (Philip III. of Spain) | 1598 |
| Philip III. (Philip IV. of Spain){xxiv} | 1621 |
| |
| The House of Braganza. |
| John IV. | 1640 |
| Affonso VI. | 1656 |
| Pedro II. (Regent 1667) | 1683 |
| John V. | 1706 |
| Joseph | 1750 |
| Maria I. and Pedro III. | 1777 |
| Maria I. alone | 1786 |
| John VI. (Regent 1799) | 1816 |
| Pedro IV. abdicated | 1826 |
| Maria II. | 1826 |
| (Miguel, 1828-1834.) | |
| Maria II. | 1834 |
| Pedro V. | 1853 |
| Luis I. | 1861 |
| Carlos I. | 1889 |
{xxv}
{xxvi}
{1}
THE STORY OF PORTUGAL.
I.
EARLY HISTORY.
THE Story of Portugal possesses a peculiar interest from the fact that
it is to its history alone that the country owes its existence as a
separate nation Geographically, the little kingdom is an integral
portion of the Iberian peninsula, with no natural boundaries to
distinguish it from that larger portion of the peninsula called Spain;
its inhabitants spring from the same stock as the Spaniards, and their
language differs but slightly from the Spanish. Its early history is
merged in that of the rest of the peninsula, and but for two great men,
Affonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, and John I., the founder
of the house of Aviz, Portugal would not at the present day rank among
the independent nations of Europe. The first of these monarchs created
his dominions into a kingdom like Leon, Castile, and Aragon, and the
latter encouraged the maritime explorations which gave the little
country an individuality and national existence, of which it{2} was justly
proud. When Philip II. annexed Portugal in 1580, it was at least a
century too late for the Portuguese to coalesce with the Spaniards. They
had then produced Vasco da Gama and Alboquerque and other great captains
and explorers, who had shown Europe the way to India by sea; and their
tongue had been developed by the genius of Camoens and Sá de Miranda,
from a Romance dialect, similar to those used in Gallicia, Castile, or
Aragon, into a great literary language. Conscious of its national
history, Portugal broke away again from Spain in 1640, and under the
protection of England maintained its separate existence during the
eighteenth century. There was some probability of a union with Spain at
the beginning of the present century, when, after the conclusion of the
Peninsular War against Napoleon, certain statesmen began to point out
the anomaly of the Iberian peninsula being divided into two separate
kingdoms, but a generation of great historians and poets soon arose, who
reminded the people of the days of Portuguese greatness and of the
glories of the past, and made it impossible for the modern Portuguese to
lose the consciousness of their individuality as a nation.
But, though the history of Portugal possesses its peculiar interest as
showing how one small portion of the Iberian peninsula maintained a
separate existence, it presents also many features of romantic incident,
especially during the epoch when it was for a time the leading nation of
Europe. The extraordinary vigour shown by the inhabitants of this small
corner of Europe during the latter half of the{3} fifteenth and first half
of the sixteenth centuries is most remarkable. Not only were Portuguese
navigators the first to creep down the west coast of Africa in small
boats, in which modern sailors would hardly like to cross the English
Channel, but they dared to double the Cape of Good Hope, and to sail
across the Indian Ocean to India and Ceylon. Thence they ventured round
the point of Singapore, and established themselves at Macao, from which
centre they explored the coasts of China and Japan. In the other
direction, to the west, they crossed the Atlantic and discovered and
colonized Brazil. Lisbon became the storehouse and centre of
distribution for the products of the East, and attained to a height of
wealth and luxury unrivalled since the days of ancient Rome. The history
of the Portuguese “conquistadores” in India for the first hundred years
after the discovery of the route round the Cape of Good Hope is one long
romance; the vastness of their designs, the grandeur of their exploits,
and the nobility of character of their great captains, combine to make a
story of surpassing interest. And when it is remembered that the
soldiers and sailors of these great discoverers and conquerors were
inhabitants of the smallest country in Europe, their success seems the
more extraordinary, and the interest in the story of the nation which
trained the Portuguese heroes becomes the more absorbing. As invariably
happens during the heroic age of a nation’s history, literature and the
arts flourished at a time distinguished by military and naval prowess,
and as Spenser and Shakespeare illustrated the Elizabethan age in
England{4} as much as Drake and Raleigh, the age of Vasco da Gama and
Alboquerque in Portugal could boast also of Gil Vicente, Sá de Miranda
and Camoens. The abrupt fall of Portugal from the greatness and wealth
of its heroic period to an insignificant place among the nations is as
full of the great lessons which history teaches as the story of its
growth. Just as the chivalry induced by the constant fighting with the
Moors, and the inspiration to great deeds fostered by freedom and the
good government of worthy kings, produced a race of heroes, so not less
surely did the growth of luxury and absolutism, assisted by the
narrow-mindedness of a dynasty of bigots, lose for Portugal the lofty
place which her heroes had won for her. These are things well worth
pondering upon and lessons well worth learning, for the great value of
the study of history is in teaching such truths as these—truths which
are eternal, while nations wax and wane.
The early history of the country, which took the name of Portugal from
the county which formed the nucleus of the future kingdom, is identical
with that of the rest of the Iberian peninsula, but deserves some slight
notice because of an old misconception, immortalized in the title of the
famous epic of Camoens, and not yet entirely eradicated even from modern
ideas. Portugal, like the rest of the peninsula, was originally
inhabited by men of the prehistoric ages, whose implements are
frequently dug up at the present day, and remains of the cave-dwellers
have been found all over the province of the Alemtejo, and more
especially in the great cave near Alter do Chão.{5} The most famous
prehistoric monument is, however, the beautiful “Anta de Guimaraens,”
about the exact date of which Portuguese archæologists are much
exercised. These prehistoric people were conquered and exterminated by
the first waves of the great Aryan race which has spread all over
Europe. There seems to be no doubt that the Celts, the first Aryan
immigrants, were preceded by a non-Aryan race, which is called by
different writers the Iberian or the Euskaldunac nation, but this
earlier race speedily amalgamated with the Celts, and out of the two
together were formed the five tribes inhabiting the Iberian peninsula,
which Strabo names as the Cantabrians, the Vasconians, the Asturians,
the Gallicians, and the Lusitanians. It is Strabo, also, who mentions
the existence of Greek colonies at the mouths of the Tagus, Douro, and
Minho, and it is curious to note that the old name of Lisbon, Olisipo,
was from the earliest times identified with that of the hero of the
Odyssey, and was interpreted to mean the city of Ulysses. The Celtic
Iberians certainly possessed the elements of civilization, and from a
very early period they had learnt to write, and it is a remarkable fact
that the formation of the letters of their alphabet is traceable rather
to Greek than Phœnician characters. This is the more remarkable, when
it is remembered that the Phœnicians, and not the Greeks, are always
mentioned in history as monopolizing the trade of Iberia. The
Carthaginians, though they had colonies all over the peninsula,
established their rule mainly over the south and east of it, having
their capital at Carthagena or Nova Carthago, and seem to have{6}
neglected the more barbarous northern and western provinces.
It was for this reason that the Romans found far more difficulty in
subduing these latter provinces than they had in taking possession of
the former, which the Carthaginians had already conquered. The Romans
were at first satisfied with these provinces, which were ceded to them
after the conclusion of the second Punic war, but eventually they began
to spread over the hitherto neglected districts; and in 189 B.C. Lucius
Æmilius Paullus defeated the Lusitanians, and in 185 B.C. Gaius
Calpurnius forced his way across the Tagus. There is no need here to
discuss the gradual conquest by the Romans of that part of the peninsula
which includes the modern kingdom of Portugal, but it is necessary to
speak of the gallant shepherd Viriathus, who sustained a stubborn war
against the Romans from 149 B.C. until he was assassinated in 139 B.C.
because he has been generally claimed as the first national hero of
Portugal. This claim has been based upon the assumed identification of
the modern Portugal with the ancient Lusitania, an identification which
has spread its roots deep into Portuguese literature, and has until
recently been generally accepted.
The first Portuguese writer who assumed the identity of Portugal with
Lusitania was Dom Garcia de Meneses, Bishop of Evora, who wrote in the
reign of John II. at the close of the fifteenth century, though the two
terms had been used distinctively by early chroniclers, such as Lucas de
Tuy in his “Chronicon Mundi,” and Matthew de Pisano in his{7} “Guerra de
Ceuta.” The mistaken notion was further developed in the days of the
Renaissance and of the Revival of Learning, and became generally
accepted by the close of the sixteenth century, and exaggerated by the
very title of such books as the “Monarchia Lusitana” of Bernardo de
Brito and the “De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniæ” of the great antiquary
Andrea de Resende. In fact, the Portuguese writers of that epoch
delighted in calling Portugal by the classical name of Lusitania, and
Camoens, the very greatest of them all, has, by the title of his famous
epic, “Os Lusiadas” or “The Lusiads,” stamped the mistake permanently on
Portuguese literature.
This false identification has had important historical consequences.
Modern writers have on this supposition spoken of the Portuguese as a
distinct branch of the Celtic population of the Iberian peninsula
identical with the tribe of Lusitanians spoken of by Strabo. They have
further identified them with the Lusitanians who struggled so gallantly
against the Roman Republic under the leadership of Punicus and
Viriathus; they have found passages in the Latin historians describing
the Lusitanians, and have moralized upon the manner in which the
characteristics of the ancient Lusitanians re-appear in the modern
Portuguese. The identity of two nations must consist in proving their
perfect succession in either race or territory, and in neither respect
can the identity be shown in the present instance. The Celtic tribe of
Lusitanians dwelt, according to Strabo, in the districts north of the
Tagus, while the Lusitania{8} of the Latin historians of the Republic
undoubtedly lay to the south of that river though it was not used as the
name of a province until the time of Augustus, when the old division of
the peninsula into Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior was
superseded by the division into Betica, Tarraconensis, and Lusitania.
Neither in this division, nor in the division of the peninsula into the
five provinces of Tarraconensis, Carthaginensis, Betica, Lusitania, and
Gallicia, under Hadrian, was the province called Lusitania coterminous
with the modern kingdom of Portugal. Under each division the name was
given to a district south of the Tagus, and therefore not embracing the
modern provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro, Trasos-Montes, and Beira.
SPECIMEN OF ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.
(The Castellum of Q. Sertorius at Evora.)
It is important to grasp the results of this misconception, for it
emphasizes the fact that the history of Portugal for many centuries is
merged in that of the rest of the Iberian peninsula, and explains why it
is unnecessary to study the wars of the Lusitanians with the Roman
Republic, as is often done in histories of Portugal. Like the rest of
the peninsula Portugal was thoroughly Latinized in the days of the Roman
Empire; Roman coloniæ and municipia were established in places
suited for trade, such as Lisbon and Oporto, and commanding high-roads,
such as Lamego and Viseu; Roman institutions were generally adopted, and
the Latin language superseded the old Celtic dialects. The chief
Portuguese towns, like those in the rest of the peninsula, were granted
the “Jus Latinum” by Vespasian, and all the inhabitants became Roman
citizens under the{10}{9} famous decree of Caracalla. The influence of the
mighty sway of Rome has left its traces all over the peninsula, and to
as great degree in Portugal as in Spain. Portuguese law is based on the
old Roman law, as well as the Portuguese language upon Latin; and many
Portuguese institutions show the direct influence of Roman government.
Notably is this the case with regard to municipal institutions; many
Portuguese cities can boast of distinct existence ever since the Roman
Empire, and the duumviri and boni homines of those days have their
counterparts in the municipal government of the present day. During
these days of peace and prosperity Portugal also received the Christian
religion, and welcomed it as cordially as France and Spain, and
bishoprics were founded which still exist. In more material things the
dominion of Rome has left its traces in the roads and bridges made by
that race of engineers, in the beautiful remains at Leiria, and in the
aqueduct and the ruins of the temple of Diana at Evora.
Peaceful existence under the sway of Rome continued until the beginning
of the fifth century, when the Goths first forced their way across the
Pyrenees. During the first barbarian occupation, the Suevi seized
Gallicia and Tarraconensis, the Alans Lusitania and Carthaginensis, and
the Vandals Betica or Andalusia. The irruption of the Visigoths changed
this settlement; the Alans and the Vandals crossed to Africa, and the
Suevi occupied Betica and Lusitania. The Visigothic Empire left but
slight traces in Portugal, slighter even than in Spain, and the
Portuguese nobility do not, like the Spanish, invariably lay claim{11} to
Gothic descent. Ethnologically the Gothic element is very slight in
Portugal, though the country passed under the rule of the Visigoths
during the reign of Ataulphus, who married the sister of the Roman
Emperor Honorius, and remained part of their dominion for three
centuries. While the Roman rule left so many traces of its existence,
and entirely modelled the language and civilization alike of Spain and
Portugal, that of the Visigoths, which lasted nearly as long, left
hardly any traces at all. The cause is to be found in the natural
assimilation of a race in a low state of civilization to the status of a
higher race. The number of Romans who actually settled in the peninsula
must have been very small, yet the Celts adopted their language and
civilization, while the conquering Visigoths, on the other hand, adopted
the religion and civilization of the people they had conquered. The
Visigothic power reached its zenith in the reign of Euric at the end of
the fifth century, and afterwards steadily declined, being torn by
internal dissensions, and especially by the great struggle between the
nobility and the rulers of the Christian Church. It was the leaders of
the latter party, Count Julian and Archbishop Oppus, who invited the
Mohammedans from Africa into Spain, and in fighting against them,
Roderick, the last Visigothic king, was killed near Xeres, at the battle
of the Guadelete, in 711.
The history of the Mohammedans in the Iberian peninsula has been treated
in another volume of this Series,[1] and it is only necessary to note
here that under{12} the wise and tolerant rule of the Ommeyad sultans, the
rich plains alike of Spain and Portugal maintained the prosperity which
they had enjoyed under the Roman emperors and the Visigothic kings, and
that the old Roman coloniæ and municipia retained their Roman
self-government, and Lisbon and Oporto increased in wealth and
commercial importance. Though the Arabs were fanatical conquerors, the
Ommeyads were enlightened rulers, and the Christian religion was
protected, though not encouraged, as long as the Christian bishops
refrained from active exertions against the Mohammedans. In Portugal
also, owing to its distance from Cordova, the duties of government were
granted almost entirely to the Mosarabs, as the numerous native converts
to Islam were called, men who felt the importance of keeping the
adherents of the two prevailing religions from coming to blows.
But this peaceful state of things was not to last; the Iberian
peninsula, which had remained prosperous under Romans, Visigoths, and
Mohammedans, was to suffer centuries of fierce war, war which was to
devastate its fields and destroy its cities, but from which its people
were to develop into a race of hardy and chivalrous warriors. The people
of the peninsula under the rule of foreign sovereigns had become soft
and weak, occupied only in accumulating wealth, in which to live in
comfort and luxury. Architectural remains of the first thousand years of
the Christian era show to what a pitch of comfort the people had
attained, but the easy conquests of the Visigoths and the Moors prove
that they had become enervated by{13} luxury. During the next five hundred
years a different state of things was to appear. The land and the cities
alike of Spain and Portugal were to be ravaged and destroyed in terrible
wars, and a race of soldiers, bred in all the laws and customs of
chivalry, was to arise—a race which, after finding no further exercise
for its energies at home, was to extend its power to India and to the
New World, as yet unknown, across the Atlantic. Whether it were better
to spend lives of luxurious ease or to become warriors was a question
not asked of the people of the Iberian peninsula; they had no choice in
the matter; but it must not be forgotten in watching the gradual
development of this race of warriors in one part of the peninsula, in
Portugal, that it was, when formed, to do great things for Europe and
for the advancement of a higher civilization than that of the stormy
centuries in which it arose.
Towards the close of the tenth century as the Ommeyad caliphate grew
weaker, the Christian princes of Visigothic descent, who dwelt in the
mountains of the Asturias, began to grow more bold in their attacks on
the declining power; and in 997 Bermudo II., king of Gallicia, won back
the first portion of modern Portugal from the Moors by seizing Oporto
and occupying the province now known as the Entre Minho e Douro. At the
beginning of the eleventh century, the great Moorish caliphate finally
broke up, and independent Mohammedan emīrs established themselves in
every large city, against whom the Christian princes waged incessant and
successful wars. In these wars the{14} Celtic inhabitants of the peninsula
took but little part; the Moorish armies consisted of Mohammedans, the
descendants of the fierce soldiers of Abder-Rahmān and a few
Mosarabs, while the Christian armies consisted only of the feudal
chivalry of the northern mountains.
In each army different customs prevailed; the strength of the Moors lay
in their perfect military discipline and absolute obedience to their
generals; that of the Christians in the new impulse to valour given to
each individual knight by the laws of chivalry. On neither side was
personal ambition without an incentive; Moorish generals hoped to become
emīrs, Christian knights, feudal counts. The finest soldiers of both
armies were foreigners to the peninsula, being on the one side Africans,
on the other either of Gothic descent or else the flower of the chivalry
of northern Europe, which went to win its spurs in the wars against the
unbelievers, and especially admired and followed the Cid, Rodrigo Diaz
de Bivar. Between these two contending bands of warriors the unfortunate
Celtic inhabitants of the middle zone of the peninsula were crushed;
those of the mountains of the north were by feudal custom obliged to
take up arms to follow their lords, and after a century or two those of
the centre by the force of necessity became warriors also, and proceeded
to drive the Moors back to Africa.
The eleventh century was at first marked by great Christian successes,
especially in the west of the peninsula. In 1055 Ferdinand “the Great,”
king of Leon, Castile, and Gallicia, invaded the Beira; in 1057{15} he took
Lamego and Viseu; and in 1064 Coimbra, where he died in the following
year. He arranged for the government of his conquests in the only way
possible under the feudal system, by forming them into a county,
extending to the Mondego, with Coimbra as its capital. The first count
of Coimbra was Sesnando, a recreant Arab vizir, who had advised
Ferdinand to invade his district and had assisted in its easy conquest.
He had married a Christian, and was ready to defend his new religion and
the dominions he held under the Christian king with all the more vigour
from the knowledge that the Moorish emīrs and wālis to the south
regarded him as an apostate. But though Sesnando’s county of Coimbra was
the great frontier county of Gallicia, and the most important conquest
of Ferdinand “the Great,” it was not thence that the kingdom which was
to develop out of his dominions was to take its name. Among the counties
of Gallicia was one called the “comitatus Portucalensis,” because it
contained within its boundaries the famous city at the mouth of the
Douro, known in Roman and Greek times as the Portus Cale, and in modern
days as Oporto, or “The Port.” This county of Oporto or Portugal was the
one destined to give its name to the future kingdom, and was held at the
time of Ferdinand’s death by Nuno Mendes, the founder of one of the most
famous families in Portuguese history.
VIEW OF OPORTO AND VILLA NOVA FROM THE SERRA CONVENT.
(After a print by Godhino.)
Ferdinand “the Great” was succeeded in his three kingdoms of Castile,
Leon, and Gallicia, by his three sons, Sancho, Alfonso, and Garcia, the
last of whom received the two counties of Coimbra and Oporto as{17}{16} fiefs
of Gallicia, and maintained Nuno Mendes and Sesnando as his feudatories.
Under them were many feudal barons, who held their lands on condition of
military service. It is fortunately not necessary to enter into the
history of the wars between the sons of Ferdinand; it is enough to say
that the second of them, Alfonso of Leon, eventually united all his
father’s kingdoms in 1073, as Alfonso VI. The successes of the
Christians aroused the stubborn resistance of the Moors; a fresh wave of
fanaticism passed over the Mohammedans of Africa and of the peninsula,
and a new dynasty, that of the Almoravides arose, which subdued the
various emīrs and wālis who had usurped the government of various
portions of the old Ommeyad caliphate, and once more united the Moorish
power. The new dynasty collected great Moslem armies, and in 1086
Yūsuf Ibn Teshfīn routed Alfonso utterly at the battle of Zalaca,
and reconquered the peninsula up to the Ebro. In this battle all the
chivalry of the Moors and Christians was engaged, and among the latter
was Sesnando, Count of Coimbra, followed by his knights. Alfonso tried
to compensate for this defeat and his loss of territory in the east of
his dominions by conquests in the west, and in 1093 he advanced to the
Tagus and took Santarem and Lisbon, and made Sueiro Mendes count of the
new district. But these conquests he did not hold for long; the
Almoravides were in the full flush of success, and their armies were
made almost irresistible by the fresh fanaticism inspired into them.
Their conquests in the east of the peninsula after the battle of Zalaca
were followed by rapid successes in the{18} west. In 1093 Seyr, the general
of the Almoravide caliph Yūsuf, took Evora from the Emīr of
Badajoz; in 1094 he took Badajoz itself, and killed the emīr; and
retaking Lisbon and Santarem forced his way up to the Mondego. To resist
this revival of the Mohammedan power, Alfonso summoned the chivalry of
Christendom to his aid. Among the knights who joined his army eager to
win their spurs, and win dominions for themselves were Count Raymond of
Toulouse and Count Henry of Burgundy. To the former, Alfonso gave his
legitimate daughter Urraca and Gallicia; to the latter, his illegitimate
daughter Theresa, and the counties of Oporto and Coimbra, with the title
of Count of Portugal.
The history of Portugal now becomes distinct from that of the rest of
the peninsula, and it is from the year 1095 that the history of Portugal
commences. The son of Henry of Burgundy was the great monarch Affonso
Henriques, the hero of his country and the founder of a great dynasty.
Up to this time it has been impossible to separate the history of
Portugal from that of Spain, but it has been necessary to point out the
fact that the history of the two countries had been hitherto identical,
in order to dissipate the common error that the Spaniards and Portuguese
belong to distinct races. The fact that the history of Portugal does not
begin until such a comparatively recent date teaches another important
lesson, that the nations of modern Europe must not be looked upon as
having been complete entities from the earliest times, but in some
instances owe their distinct nationality at the present day to
fortuitous circumstances.{19}
In 1095 a powerful county of Portugal was formed: its growth to a
kingdom and the extension of its dominions by conquests from the Moors
will now have to be studied, as well as its difficulty in maintaining
its independence among the other nations of the peninsula, before it can
be seen as the leading nation of the world, in the van of the march of
European civilization.
{20}
II.
THE COUNTY OF PORTUGAL.
COUNT HENRY of Burgundy, his wife Theresa, and his son Affonso
Henriques, were the three founders of Portugal, and they were all of
them individuals of marked personality. They were typical figures of
their epoch, possessing the curious mixture of virtues and vices which
characterized the age of chivalry.
Count Henry was the second son of Henry, who was the third son of
Robert, first Duke of Burgundy, and he was like his father and
grandfather, a knight of the old French school, combining a passionate
love for adventure and for war with an ambitious and self-seeking
temperament. He had come to Spain to the assistance of the Christians,
as much with the purpose of founding a dynasty as for the love of war,
and from the first he turned his thoughts more to the hope of succeeding
his father-in-law, Alfonso VI., in one at least of his kingdoms, than to
carving a kingdom for himself out of the dominions of the Arab caliphs.
He received his county of Portugal, the dowry of his wife, Theresa,
illegitimate daughter of Alfonso VI., as a direct fief of the crown of
Gallicia, one of the{21} three kingdoms of his father-in-law. This kingdom
Alfonso had granted, as a fief, not as a kingdom, to Count Raymond of
Toulouse, who had married his legitimate daughter, Urraca, and Count
Henry highly disapproved of being in some sort a feudatory of his
fellow-adventurer. At first the jealousy between Henry and Raymond did
not show itself; for Count Henry had to fight hard to defend his
southern frontiers against the incursions of the Mohammedan general
Seyr. To his help he summoned the chivalry of France, and the knights of
his native country flocked to his assistance, and were promoted to high
military positions and to feudal dignities by him. Battle succeeded
battle without either side gaining any decisive victory, until after
seven years’ hard fighting both Christians and Moors decided to rest
awhile to recover from their exhaustion.
Count Henry was, however, too much the restless knight of the Middle
Ages to remain quiet long. Since his Portuguese warriors were weary, and
the battle-ground for miles on each bank of the Tagus was laid utterly
waste, he could fight no longer in his own country against the
unbelievers, and so hurried off in 1103 with Maurice, Bishop of Coimbra,
to fight them in Palestine. For two years he served in the expedition
known as the Second Crusade, and when he returned he was still ready for
more fighting at home. His restlessness was typical of his epoch. The
knights of the Crusades were always knights-errant, always in search of
adventure, and never satiated with war. This spirit was encouraged by
the Church, and while the Almoravide caliph Yūsuf was organizing{22} his
military forces for a fresh assault on the Christians, Count Henry, on
the other hand, went off in search of adventure abroad, leaving his
county under the government of his wife, Theresa.
Fortunately for Portugal, Theresa was a singularly able woman. Beautiful
and accomplished, the idol of poets and musicians, and capable of
inspiring the deepest devotion, she threw herself heart and soul into
the task which her restless husband abandoned, and spent the years of
his absence in training the Portuguese for fresh struggles. She too
possessed all the faults and virtues of her epoch; passionate to a
degree in every sense, she became the adored divinity of her nobles, and
prepared herself during this brief regency for the longer regency of her
widowhood. Her great aim at this time, as it was throughout her stormy
life, was to make the Portuguese nobles regard themselves as Portuguese,
and not as Gallicians, and thus prepare them to make their country
independent. But though her chief endeavour was to heighten and animate
the spirit of her nobles, she did not neglect other classes of her
subjects; she encouraged the citizens of her cities in their ideas of
municipal independence, and urged them to keep their fortifications in
good repair, and to be ready to go forth to war under captains of their
own choice, instead of under hereditary leaders from among the nobility.
The result of this policy was that, in the next generation, the military
retainers of the great nobles, who resided in their castles, went forth
to fight side by side with the free citizens under their elected
leaders, and that her son was able to lead two{23} distinct classes of
soldiers under his banners, who vied with each other in prowess against
foreign foes, while they were a check upon each other at home, and could
be played off against one another in case either class became dangerous
to their suzerain.
When Count Henry returned from Palestine in 1105, he became united with
his former brother-in-arms, Count Raymond of Gallicia, by a common
feeling of jealousy. Both looked forward to inheriting portions of King
Alfonso’s dominions, and were extremely suspicious lest the old monarch
should favour his natural son, Sancho, whose mother was a Moorish
princess, Zaida, daughter of Ibn Abbad, Emīr of Seville. In their
dislike for Sancho they were encouraged by the priests, to whom
Alfonso’s affection for a Moorish woman was abhorrent, and an agreement
was made between the brothers-in-law by an ambitious French monk, named
Hugh of Cluny, afterwards Bishop of Oporto, to oust the son of the
infidel. This peaceful arrangement had no result, owing to the death of
Count Raymond in 1107, followed by that of young Sancho at the battle of
Uclés with the Moors in 1108, and finally by the death of Alfonso VI.
himself in 1109.
The king’s death brought about the catastrophe. He left all his
dominions to his legitimate daughter, Urraca, with the result that there
was five years of fierce fighting between Henry of Burgundy, Alfonso
Raimundes, the son of Count Raymond, Alfonso I., of Aragon, and Queen
Urraca, during which the Almoravides quietly consolidated their power
and prepared for a fresh attack upon the Christians.{24} Nothing proves
more certainly that the crusading spirit was often only a cloak for
personal ambition than this terrible internecine war, in which princes
and nobles changed sides and broke their plighted words with a
recklessness supposed to be distinctive of a most abandoned age. While
they fought with each other, the Mohammedans advanced. The Almoravide
Ali, who had succeeded his father, Yūsuf, in Spain and Morocco,
reconquered Talavera and Madrid, and laid siege to Toledo, while his
famous general, Seyr Ibn Abi-Bekr, reconquered the Moorish emīrs of
the western towns, who had revolted, and in 1112 besieged Santarem,
which then formed the southernmost outpost of the county of Portugal.
Before he took it however, Seyr died, and Count Henry, who had been
forced to come south in order to meet the invaders, once more returned
to continue his wars with the Christian princes. Only one incident in
Count Henry’s march against the Mohammedans deserves record, and that is
the refusal of the citizens of Coimbra to admit their count into their
city, or to follow him to the front, unless he confirmed the privileges
granted to them by Donna Theresa, and granted them certain fresh
concessions. Henry was forced to grant them, and on the death of Seyr,
he again advanced into Spain, and joined in further intrigues. These did
not last long, for on May 1, 1114, Count Henry died at Astorga, not
without a suspicion that he had been poisoned by Queen Urraca, leaving
his wife Theresa as regent during the minority of his son, Affonso
Henriques, who was but three years old.
Theresa, who made the ancient city of Guimaraens{25} her capital, devoted
all her energies to building up her son’s dominions into an independent
state; and under her rule, while the Christian states of Spain were torn
by internecine war, the Portuguese began to recognize Portugal as their
country, and to cease from calling themselves Gallicians. This
distinction between Portugal and Gallicia was the first step towards the
formation of a national spirit, which grew into a desire for national
independence. The people were the same in origin, and spoke the same
language. The province of Gallicia had both in Roman and Gothic times
spread as far south as the Tagus, and no distinction had been made
between the Gallicians of the north and south until Alfonso VI. had
given Count Henry his large domain. It was Donna Theresa who first tried
to make the distinction more marked. Count Henry had looked upon his
county as a step to the succession to the kingdom of Gallicia, if not to
the two kingdoms of Leon and Gallicia. Donna Theresa, on the other hand,
looked upon Portugal as an independent country, and desired rather to
extend her frontiers at the expense of Gallicia than to succeed to the
throne of that kingdom.
In her efforts to promote the unity of Portugal and its independence of
Gallicia, Donna Theresa was warmly seconded by her people, and
especially by the inhabitants of the cities whom she favoured, while
among the ruling classes she had the support of the clergy and the
opposition of the greater part of the nobility. Most of her nobles owned
great estates in both Gallicia and Portugal, for the feudal grants of{26}
land conquered by the Christian kings from the Mohammedans were
generally made to noblemen, who had led large contingents to their help.
These nobles were naturally opposed to a separation between Portugal and
Gallicia, which would make them feudatories to two different lords, and
often oblige them in case of disputes between their suzerains to
sacrifice one of their properties. On the other hand, the Portuguese
bishops were suffragans of the reconstructed archbishopric of Braga, and
owed no obedience to any Gallician bishop; indeed, they were especially
hostile to the wealthiest of them, the powerful bishop of the great
pilgrim city of Santiago da Campostella. It has been said that many of
the Christian bishoprics continued to exist during the Moorish
occupation, and had a continuous history from the first conversion of
the people to Christianity, but some had lapsed owing to the poverty of
their sees. The advance of the Christian princes, which was due as much
to religious as to political motives, brought about the re-establishment
of the bishoprics which had lapsed, and the increased endowment of those
which had continued to exist. The new bishops held a very different
position from their predecessors. They were not the poor shepherds of
poor flocks, in a land ruled by infidels, but powerful barons, holding
great estates on military tenure, who united the influence of their
sacred rank to their temporal power. The metropolitan of these
Portuguese bishops was the Archbishop of Braga, and it was naturally his
policy to support the independence of the county of Portugal, for it was
better for him to be the head of the Church of an important county{28}{27}
than to be merely one of the archbishops of the kingdom of Gallicia.
This was the attitude taken up by the first great Archbishop of Braga,
Mauricio Burdino, a Frenchman, and the companion in Palestine of Count
Henry, who had promoted him from the bishopric of Coimbra to the
metropolitan see. In it he was supported by Hugh, Bishop of Oporto, the
most wealthy of his suffragans, and the history of the ensuing century
gives many instances of the patriotism of the Portuguese bishops, and of
their efforts to promote and maintain the independence of the new state.
COIMBRA. (PRESENT STATE.) (After a Photograph.)
The regency of Donna Theresa was marked by many struggles, the history
of which it is now difficult to trace, but throughout them all, the
growing unity of Portugal can be perceived. She took a keen interest in
the politics of Gallicia, for she hoped to extend her frontiers to the
north, and in 1116 she led her forces in person to the assistance of
Diogo Gelmires, Bishop of Santiago da Campostella, and the Count de
Trava, who had headed a rising, intended to depose Queen Urraca, and to
place her young son Alfonso Raimundes at once upon the throne of
Gallicia. In this war Theresa took the towns of Tuy and Orense, and the
warrior countess met, in the course of it for the first time, the young
hidalgo, Don Fernando Peres de Trava, with whom she fell passionately in
love, and whose history was for the future to be linked with hers. In
1117 the Moors, under their caliph Ali in person, invaded her dominions,
and besieged her in Coimbra, but she succeeded in beating them off, and
spent the following years in peace and quiet,{29} in the constant company
of her lover, whom she made governor of Coimbra and Oporto, and Count of
Trastamare; while to his elder brother, Bermudo Peres de Trava, she gave
the hand of her second daughter by Count Henry, the Donna Urraca, and
the governorship of Viseu.
But this quiet enjoyment of peace and love was not long allowed to the
beautiful ruler of Portugal. Her half-sister Urraca, the Queen of
Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, had been hitherto too much engaged in
fighting with her second husband, Alfonso I. of Aragon, to pay any
attention to her; but she too was a warrior princess, and in 1121 she
ordered Theresa to surrender the city of Tuy. Theresa refused, and
Urraca led an army against her, which defeated the Portuguese at Tuy,
and eventually the queen took the Countess of Portugal prisoner after a
long siege of the castle of Lanhoso. It seemed as if the nascent
independence of Portugal was about to be crushed, but Bishop Gelmires
came to the assistance of Theresa, who had done so much for his friends
and relatives, the De Travas, and threatened to attack Urraca unless she
made peace with her half-sister. Urraca was forced to comply, and the
treaty of peace which was then signed marks another stage in the growth
of the independence of Portugal, for in it Donna Theresa is styled
Infanta, and treated as the equal of Queen Urraca, who further promised
to cede to her the cities and districts of Toro, Zamora, and Salamanca.
For the next few years the careers of the half-sisters were singularly
similar. Queen Urraca showered favours on her lover, Don Pedro de Lara,{30}
until her young son, Alfonso Raimundes, assisted by Bishop Gelmires,
revolted against her; while Donna Theresa, with equal blindness, devoted
herself to her love for Don Fernando Peres de Trava, and thus aroused
the hatred of her boy-son Affonso Henriques and of Paio Mendes, who in
1121 had succeeded Mauricio Burdino as Archbishop of Braga. Her quarrel
with Paio Mendes commenced in the year after he became archbishop, and
well illustrates the attitude of the Portuguese bishops. As long as
Theresa had remained the living symbol of Portuguese unity and
independence the bishops had followed her, but as soon as she showed her
love for a Gallician nobleman they turned against her. Paio Mendes was
quite ready to lead the malcontents, for he was the brother of Count
Sueiro Mendes of Oporto, surnamed the Great, who was the head of the
purely Portuguese, as opposed to the mixed Portuguese and Gallician,
nobility. In 1122 Archbishop Paio protested against the gift of so many
important posts to Don Fernando, and the proud countess immediately cast
him into prison. She was obliged in a few days to release him, for fear
of a papal interdict; but she had made a bitter enemy, who was soon to
have an opportunity for revenge.
The discontent with Theresa did not show itself openly until 1127, when
Alfonso Raimundes, who had succeeded his mother Urraca in the preceding
year, and taken the title of Alfonso VII., King of Castile, Leon, and
Gallicia, invaded Portugal and forced Theresa to recognize him as
suzerain, and to surrender her claims to Tuy and Orense. The citizens{31}
of Guimaraens, the capital of the county, at once declared Affonso
Henriques of age, and competent to reign; but Alfonso VII. marched
against the city, and Egas Moniz, the former tutor of the young count,
who was its governor, in order to make peace, promised on behalf of his
former pupil that he would ratify Theresa’s submission. Affonso
Henriques, however, though only a boy of seventeen, absolutely refused
to recognize the submission made by his mother and his tutor, and in
1128 he raised an army with the declared intention of expelling Donna
Theresa and her lover from the country. In this movement the boy was
encouraged by Archbishop Paio and his brother Sueiro Mendes, by one of
his brothers-in-law, Sancho Nunes, by his half-brother, Pedro Affonso,
an illegitimate son of Count Henry, by Emigio Moniz, and by Garcia
Soares. Donna Theresa also collected an army, consisting chiefly of
Gallicians, but she was defeated by her son at the battle of S. Mamede,
near Guimaraens, and taken prisoner, and was shortly afterwards
expelled, with Don Fernando, from the county she had ruled so long.
Thus ended the regency of Donna Theresa. She had not added a single town
to her son’s dominions, for her early conquests had been recaptured by
Queen Urraca and Alfonso VII. But she had done more for Portugal than
making conquests. She had asserted its independence, and though she
seldom called herself Queen, she never took any title less than that of
Infanta. She had also prepared for the extension of Portugal towards the
south at the end of her regency by encouraging the settlement of the
orders of{32} religious knights there. To the Knights Templars she had
granted, in 1128, the frontier town of Soure; to the Knights of the Holy
Sepulchre S. Payo de Gouvea, Lodeiro, and Paços de Penalva; and to the
Knights of the Hospital, the town of Leça. From these beginnings great
results were to arise during the reign of her son.
The last years of Theresa’s life were quite out of keeping with the
brilliancy of her regency. After her expulsion she wandered about in the
mountains of Gallicia with her lover until her death, in poverty, on
November 1, 1130. Her body was taken to Portugal, and buried beside that
of Count Henry, her husband, in the Cathedral of Braga, and both of them
are reverenced by modern Portuguese as the founders of the independence
of their country. Her history is a strange one. To political instincts
and a capability for government which rank her among the most remarkable
women of the whole period of the Middle Ages; to a manly courage, which
inspired her to lead her soldiers in person to the fight and enabled her
to withstand a Moorish siege, she joined the most feminine of
qualities—that of entire devotion to the man she loved. Her love for
Fernando Peres may have made her deviate from the path she should have
followed as regent of Portugal, but it does not make her a less
interesting character in the eyes of posterity. If she loved too
greatly, she was greatly punished, and her death in exile more than
atoned for the favour she bestowed on her lover. The task commenced by
Count Henry and Donna Theresa was destined to be accomplished by one
greater than{33} either of them, by the hero of early Portuguese history,
Affonso Henriques, who united his father’s restless and chivalrous
valour with the political ability of his mother.
{34}
III.
PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. THE REIGN OF AFFONSO HENRIQUES.
AFFONSO HENRIQUES, the only son of Count Henry and Donna Theresa, who at
the age of seventeen, after the battle of S. Mamede, began his long and
prosperous reign, was one of the heroes of the Middle Ages. He succeeded
to the government of Portugal when it was still regarded generally, in
spite of Theresa’s claims, as a county of Gallicia, and after nearly
sixty years of incessant fighting he bequeathed to his son a powerful
little kingdom, whose independence was unquestioned, and whose fame was
spread abroad throughout Christendom by the victories of its first
monarch over the Moors. The story of his early years abounds in
miraculous legends and tales, like those told of the youth of Arthur and
Charlemagne, which, if not credible in themselves, are interesting as
showing the feelings of the Portuguese chroniclers and poets towards
him. His boyish exploits in the mountains around Guimaraens, in which he
is said to have fought wolves as he afterwards fought the Moors, and the
tale of the fire{35} which played about his cradle without hurting or even
terrifying the youthful hero, savour of the marvellous and were
evidently invented in after years. But in telling the tale of his
education and bringing up his biographers were on firmer ground. His
father had died when he was but an infant, and his mother was too much
occupied with her lover and with the cares of government to pay much
attention to him. He was handed over entirely to the charge of a gallant
Portuguese nobleman, Egas Moniz, the governor of Guimaraens. The young
count showed himself an adept in all knightly exercises; he became a
skilful horseman and a fearless hunter; and added to these
accomplishments, a knowledge of reading and writing rarely acquired in
those times by any but ecclesiastics. His disposition was that of knight
of the Middle Ages; with the greatest personal bravery, he possessed a
love for poetry and romance, and delighted in the tales of chivalry
which were sung before him; and he was moreover a typical Christian of
the period, uniting a belief in superstitions, which made him a fanatic,
with a looseness of life, when love for women or romantic adventure was
in question, which directly belied his religious professions.
His initiation into public life began at the age of fourteen, when he
was taken by his tutor and guardian to Zamora to receive the honour of
knighthood, in the cathedral from his cousin, Alfonso VII. It was at the
feast of Pentecost, in 1125, that he thus devoted his life to chivalry,
and he made his vows and watched his arms throughout the night in the{36}
cathedral with all the ardour of his age and temperament. He was to
fight in many a war with the cousin who then made him a knight; but
neither of them, though failing to lead moral lives, ever failed to
acquit himself as a chivalrous knight. Affonso returned to Guimaraens
with Egas Moniz, and many of the Portuguese nobility at once proposed
that he should assume the government of his county in person and deprive
his mother of the regency. He was trained to this idea by Archbishop
Paio Mendes and his party, and when Donna Theresa and Egas Moniz
promised for him that he would submit to Alfonso VII. he refused to
ratify their promises, and declared himself of age in 1128. He speedily
defeated his mother at the battle of S. Mamede, and then became the real
ruler of his county. In his conduct after this behaviour of his ward and
pupil, old Egas Moniz showed how fit he was to have been the tutor of a
hero. When the old nobleman understood that Affonso would not make the
submission to the King of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, which he had
promised in the young count’s name, he went to Toledo with his wife and
children, and, surrendered himself to Alfonso VII. The young king
honoured the old man’s loyalty to his word, and, instead of punishing
him, pointed him out to his courtiers as a model to be imitated, and
said aloud, “What great things will not the pupil of such a noble knight
be able to perform!”
The reign of Affonso Henriques may be divided into four clearly marked
periods—the regency of Donna Theresa; the wars of dismemberment, by
which{37} the independence of Portugal was established; the wars of
acquisition against the Moors, by which the southern frontier of the
country was extended; and the period of partial decline after the defeat
and imprisonment of the king in 1166. Of these four periods the first
has been described, but each of the others deserves a close examination,
for each of them possesses a distinct importance in Portuguese history.
The four wars of Affonso Henriques with Alfonso VII. ended in the
recognition of the Portuguese hero as king, and in the abandonment by
him of all interference in Gallicia. The first Gallician war consisted
of an incursion by Affonso Henriques into Gallicia, in 1130, the year of
his mother’s death, which was caused by the desire of the Count to
punish Fernando Peres, who was preparing on his side an invasion of
Portugal. From this incursion Affonso was recalled by the news that
Fernando’s brother, Bermudo Peres, who had married Affonso’s sister, and
was governor of Viseu, was in open insurrection. Affonso instantly
returned, took Bermudo’s castle of Seia, confiscated his estates, and
forced him to become a monk; and the Gallician party in Portugal
received a blow from which it never recovered. In 1135 Affonso made a
second incursion into Gallicia, took the town of Limia, and built the
great castle of Celmes. Alfonso VII., who had in this year been elected
Emperor, and whose supremacy was acknowledged not only all over Spain,
but in Provence as well, was not likely to brook this insolence on the
part of the Count of Portugal, and speedily sent an army, which captured
Celmes and then withdrew. Affonso did not feel grateful for the{38}
leniency with which he had been treated, but in 1137 made a third
incursion into Gallicia, at the invitation of Gomes Nunes of Tuy, and
Rodrigo Peres of Limia, and utterly defeated the counts true to Alfonso
VII., headed by his old enemy Fernando Peres, and by Rodrigo Vela, in
the hard-fought battle of Cerneja. This defeat at last roused the
Emperor Alfonso, who came in person with a powerful army to punish the
count, or as he now termed himself, the Infante of Portugal. Fortunately
for Affonso the two armies did not come to blows; the ecclesiastics on
both sides argued that it was monstrous for two Christian princes to
fight with each other instead of with the Moors, and by the mediation of
the Archbishop of Braga and the Bishop of Oporto, on behalf of Affonso,
and of the Bishops of Tuy, Segovia, and Orense for the Emperor, the
Peace of Tuy was signed on July 4, 1137. By this peace Affonso Henriques
promised to abandon all interference with Gallician affairs, and to
submit himself as a vassal to the Emperor, and both princes swore to
turn their arms against the Mohammedans. But the Portuguese prince did
not abide by the terms of the Peace of Tuy, in so far as it made him a
vassal; and after winning his famous victory over the Moors at Ourique,
in 1139, he again invaded Gallicia, and in 1140 the last battle between
the sons of the two brothers-in-arms, the French counts, Raymond and
Henry, was fought. Affonso Henriques was wounded, and it was agreed, in
consonance with the ideas of the times, to refer the great question of
Portuguese {39}independence to a chivalrous contest. In a great tournament,
known as the “Tourney of Valdevez,” the Portuguese knights were entirely
successful over those of Castile, and in consequence of their victory
Affonso Henriques assumed the title of King of Portugal.
This is the turning-point of Portuguese history, and it is a curious
fact that the independence of Portugal from Gallicia was achieved by
victory in a tournament and not in war. Up to 1136 Affonso Henriques had
styled himself Infante, in imitation of the title borne by his mother;
from 1136 to 1140 he styled himself Principe, and in 1140 he first took
the title of King. There is no document extant in which the Emperor
acknowledged his cousin as a sovereign as early as this date, and,
indeed, the agreement is only known as the “Truce of Valdevez,” but he
obviously acquiesced in it, on condition that Affonso Henriques gave up
all idea of interfering in Gallician politics or of extending his
frontiers towards the north. But a more important consent than that of
the Emperor had to be obtained before the Portuguese prince could obtain
admission into the sacred circle of Christian kings, and this was the
consent of the Pope. The head of the Church at this period was Innocent
II., who was earnestly desirous of promoting the crusading spirit, and
was especially grieved at the very existence of the Moors in Spain. He
despatched Cardinal Guy de Vico to establish union amongst the Christian
princes there, and the cardinal in 1143 drew up a regular peace and
treaty between the Emperor and Affonso Henriques at Zamora. By this
treaty the latter was recognized as sovereign{40} monarch of Portugal, and
the Emperor also granted to him the lordship of Astorga as a fief, in
order that he might thus exercise some control over the Portuguese king.
In reward for the mediation of the cardinal, Affonso Henriques further
declared himself by letter to be a vassal of the Pope, and promised to
pay four ounces of gold a year, by which measure he placed himself under
the protection of the Spiritual Head of Christendom, and secured a
guarantee for the perpetuation of his dynasty.
Portugal was now an independent kingdom. The wars of dismemberment were
over; the wars of extension and establishment were now to take their
place. The next twenty-five years of the reign of Affonso Henriques were
spent in one long crusade against the Moors, and were full of incident
and adventure.
But before entering upon a summary description of these wars, which
spread the fame of the Portuguese and of their monarch throughout
Europe, something must be said of the Moorish wars, which were carried
on simultaneously with the wars of dismemberment. These Gallician wars
have been described first and by themselves, because of the common
mistake made that it was by his successes against the Moors that Affonso
Henriques won his crown. This mistake is of old standing; the early
Portuguese chroniclers always ascribed the independence of their country
as due to the successes of their first king over the infidels, and it
was not until the modern school of historians arose in Portugal, which
examined documents and did not take the statements of their predecessors
on{41} trust, that it was clearly pointed out that Affonso Henriques won
his crown by his long struggle with his Christian cousin, and not by his
exploits against the Moors. This fact is such an important one that it
ranks amongst the most startling discoveries made by the modern
scientific school of historians, and to bring it into clearer prominence
the early years of war with the Moors have been purposely passed over
until now; although there can be no doubt that the exploits of the great
Portuguese crusader made the Emperor more ready to recognize him as an
independent sovereign, and the Pope more anxious to comply with his
desire to be admitted among the sovereigns of Europe. As a proof of his
admission it may be noted here that Affonso Henriques married in 1146
the daughter of a European prince, Matilda of Savoy, daughter of Amadeus
II., Count of Savoy, Maurrienne, and Piedmont.
A VIEW OF THE ANCIENT MOORISH BATH AT CINTRA.
(From Murphy’s “Travels in Portugal,” 1795.)
The condition of the Moorish power in Spain had been particularly
favourable to his early enterprises in Gallicia, for it had left him
comparatively free from the fear of invasion from the south, and given
him opportunities for winning signal victories. The wave of Mohammedan
fanaticism, which had established the Almoravid dynasty in Spain and
Morocco, and defeated the Christian chivalry at the battle of Zalaca,
had lost its power, and the Almoravides had degenerated.[2] Independent
Mohammedan dynasties had again established themselves in the different
provinces of Spain, while in Africa, the successor of the Mahdi,
Abd-el-Mumin, was destroying the power{43}{42} of the Almoravides with a fresh
fanatical movement. The three independent emīrs with whom the
Portuguese had to deal were those of the Alfaghar or Algarves, of
Al-kasr Ibn Abi Danes, which comprised Badajoz, Elvas, and Evora, and of
the Belatha, which included the Mohammedan possessions to the north of
the Tagus with the important cities of Lisbon, Santarem, and Cintra.
Under these emīrs were numerous “wālis” of districts, “vezīrs”
of cities, and “kāids” of castles, who were semi-independent; and as
not only the emīrs, but their subordinates were constantly at war
with each other, and could expect but little help from the Almoravide
caliph, the incursions of the Portuguese were generally crowned with
success.
After his accession to the government, Affonso Henriques had chiefly
left the duty of harassing the Moors to the Knights Templars and Knights
Hospitallers, who engaged in frequent expeditions from their
headquarters at Soure and Thomar, where they had been established by
Donna Theresa. Busied as he was with his schemes for independence,
Affonso did little to assist these knightly monks, except to build a
great castle at Leiria, which was intended at once to cover his capital
Coimbra, and to serve as a base for expeditions against Santarem and
Cintra. The erection of this castle alarmed the Mohammedans of the
Belatha, and caused them for a moment to drop their quarrels with each
other. They raised a large army, and in 1135, the very year in which the
castle of Leiria had been built, they stormed it, killed the 240 knights
who had been left as its garrison, and{44} defeated a Christian army at
Thomar. At the time of these disasters Affonso was in Gallicia, but when
affairs there were temporarily settled by the Peace of Tuy, he prepared
to undertake a great expedition against the Moors and gathered all the
chivalry of Portugal to follow him.
When he had collected his army in May, 1139, he determined to do more
than make one of the usual expeditions into the ruined and devastated
districts of the Belatha, and to force his way to the south of the
Tagus, and thus drive the war into the heart of the enemy’s country. He
knew that the opposition would not be so serious as it would have been
in previous years, because Teshfīn, the last Almoravide caliph, who
had succeeded his father in 1137, had in 1138 taken the flower of the
Mohammedan chivalry of Spain across the straits to Africa to make a last
effort to subdue the growing power of the Almohades or followers of the
Mahdi. He knew also that his cousin Alfonso was making his second
incursion into the heart of Andalusia, and he therefore boldly crossed
the Tagus and entered the province of Al-kasr Ibn Abi Danes, as the
western portion of the old Moslem emirate of the Gharb was called. The
emīr, Ismar or Omar, tried to collect an army, but Affonso advanced
with rapidity and utterly defeated him, with four of his “wālis,” at
Orik or Ourique eight leagues south of Beja, on July 25, 1139.
This is the famous victory of Ourique, which, until modern investigators
examined the facts, has been considered to have laid the foundations of
the independence{45} of Portugal. Chroniclers, two centuries after the
battle solemnly asserted that five kings were defeated on this occasion,
that two hundred thousand Mohammedans were slain, and that after the
victory the Portuguese soldiers raised Affonso on their shields and
hailed him as king. This story is absolutely without authority from
contemporary chronicles, and is quite as much a fiction as the Cortes of
Lamego, which has been invented as sitting in 1143 and passing the
constitutional laws, on which Vertot and other writers have expended so
much eloquence. One ought, perhaps, to speak with more reverence of the
legend which tells how Christ crucified appeared to Affonso in his tent,
on the evening before the battle, and promised him the victory, even
though there is no contemporary tradition referring to it; because it
would have been quite in keeping with the mysticism of the Middle Ages
for Affonso to assert that he had seen such a vision in order to
encourage his soldiers. This tradition was certainly current a century
after the battle, and the kings of Portugal to this day bear the five
wounds of Christ in a chief upon their coat of arms in memory of it.[3]
These legends all deserve record, if only to show how great was the fame
of the victory of Affonso, rather from his courage in penetrating so far
into the enemy’s country than from his success in the battle itself.
That success was a victory over five provincial wālis in a country
which hated the Almoravides, at a time when the flower of{46} the Moslem
chivalry was fighting in Africa, and it was not by such victories, but
by hard struggles with his Christian cousin that Affonso achieved the
independence of his country. If any other further proof that the victory
was not all that poets and later historians painted it was needed, it
might be found in the fact that in the very next year Ismar or Omar, the
emīr who was defeated at Ourique, was able to raise a fresh army with
which he took the castle of Leiria by storm.
ARCH OF THE WESTERN ENTRANCE TO AN OLD CHAPEL AT LEIRIA.
For many years after the recognition of Affonso’s independence the
history of his reign is filled by accounts of the wars against the
Moors. But the warfare no longer comprised single expeditions, such as
that crowned by the victory of Ourique, but steady persevering conquest
of the Belatha. The efforts of the Portuguese were at first directed
against cities and castles, and the country districts were ravaged and
left to lie waste. The whole of the district between Coimbra and the
Tagus was one great battle-ground, and Affonso had all he could do to
take and hold the cities, and was obliged to leave the villages in a
state of desolation. The population of his original kingdom was not
large enough to colonize the new conquests, and Affonso therefore
confined his efforts to laying waste the fields and garrisoning the
cities he took from the Moors with any soldiers he could manage to take
into his pay. It must be noted that the war was not one of
extermination; the Mohammedan and Christian soldiers fought fiercely
enough, but the Celtic inhabitants of the cities, and the large
intermixture of Jews, who dwelt amongst them, passed{48}{47} from the dominion
of the one race to that of the other quietly enough. The war was a war
of soldiers, and Affonso’s difficulty was to get enough of them to make
a successful attempt to maintain his conquests. The nobility of Portugal
followed him gladly with their vassals, and the religious orders of
knights repaid him by their services for the liberality with which Donna
Theresa had received them, but neither of these sources of military
strength were so valuable to him as the crusaders of northern Europe. He
gained their assistance in two ways. Pope Innocent II. had declared it
as praiseworthy to fight the infidels in Spain as in the Holy Land, and
many crusaders fulfilled their crusading vows by coming to Portugal and
taking service there. But most of the warriors of the cross preferred
rather to make their way to Palestine, and as those from England,
Flanders, and the north of France went round by sea, and invariably
touched at Oporto, Affonso was able to persuade many of them to do a
little fighting under his command against the Moors before proceeding to
attack the Saracens in the Holy Land. This was what he did in 1143,
when, with some French crusaders, he ravaged the district around Lisbon.
The history of the Portuguese conquest of the Belatha is of the greatest
importance in itself, and it is noticeable that Affonso’s first
incursion into the country, held by the Moors after the signature of the
Treaty of Zamora, took place at the invitation of a Moorish emīr.
Ahmad Ibn Kasi, Emīr of Mertola, wrote to him in 1144 under the name
and title of Ibn Errik, Lord of Coimbra, and begged him to come to{49} his
assistance against the Emīr of Badajoz. But the Moorish soldiers of
Ahmad Ibn Kasi refused to fight in the same ranks with the Christians,
and Affonso was requested to retire and loaded with presents. After this
he felt increasingly that it was more advantageous for him to conquer
the neighbouring cities one by one than to make these distant
expeditions. It was obvious that his first attack should be directed
against the great and beautiful city of Santarem, which commanded the
upper reaches of the Tagus, and lay at but one day’s march from his
capital at Coimbra. Abu Zekeria, the “vezīr” of Santarem, was the
most famous Mohammedan warrior in the Belatha, and had inflicted a
signal defeat upon the Knights Templars at Soure, and in him Affonso had
a worthy opponent. The only way to take his city was to surprise it, and
for this end the Portuguese king made elaborate preparations. He told no
one of his real intention, except one old soldier, Mem Ramires, and the
first Portuguese canonized saint, St. Theotonio, then prior of the
convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra. On March 2, 1147, he led his army
forth, and, surprising the city before its “vezīr” had time to
provision it, he laid siege for a few days, and on March 15th carried it
by storm with but slight resistance from the dispirited garrison.
VIEW OF LISBON. (After a Photograph.)
This feat of arms was surpassed in the same year by a still greater
event, the capture of Lisbon, the important city at the mouth of the
Tagus, the future capital of Portugal, and the port from which the
Portuguese ships were to sail forth on their voyages of discovery both
to the east and the west. Affonso{51}{50} Henriques had long wished to capture
this great city, for if he possessed it as well as Santarem, he would be
able to defend the Tagus as his southern boundary, and have a much
better base of operations. This ancient city was, from its position on
the Tagus, the natural capital of the western coast of the Iberian
peninsula, and had been an ancient Greek colony. The legend that it was
founded by Ulysses, who gave its name, Ulyssipo, afterwards corrupted
into Olisipo and Lisbon, is an ancient one; and it certainly held that
name up to the time of Augustus, when a Roman colony was fixed there,
and its name was changed to Felicitas Julia. Its capture by the Moors in
714 had marked one of their greatest stages of advance, and it remained
the capital of their province of the Belatha for more than four hundred
years. It had three times been captured by the Christians—in 792 by
Alfonso the Chaste, of Castile; in 851 by Ordonho I., of Leon; and in
1093 by Alfonso VI., the father-in-law of Count Henry, but had only
remained in their possession twenty years after the first recapture, and
only a few months upon the second and third occasions. On this occasion
Affonso hoped to be permanently successful, and to make it the capital
of his kingdom.
It is very doubtful if the Portuguese king would have entered upon this
hazardous feat of arms so soon after his capture of Santarem, had not
the news reached him from Oporto that a great fleet of crusaders had put
in there, and that the Bishop of Oporto had persuaded the soldiers of
the cross to commence their holy war against the infidels by assisting
to take Lisbon before they proceeded on their way to Palestine.{52} The
bulk of these crusaders were Englishmen, and as a letter describing the
expedition and siege by one of their number has lately been discovered
and published,[4] it is possible to trace the whole history of this most
important event in the history of Portugal. The fleet which had sailed
from Dartmouth consisted of 164 ships, under several captains, of whom
the most important were Arnold of Aerschot and Christian Ghistell,
commanding the Germans, Flemings, and men of the county of Boulogne;
Hervey Glanvill, constable of the men of Norfolk and Suffolk; Simon of
Dover, “constable of all the ships of Kent;” Andrew of London, and Saher
de Arcellis. The English crusader tells in his letter that the
proposition of the Bishop of Oporto was not universally well received,
and that two “pirates,” named William Vitulus and Ralph his brother,
succeeded in leading away for a time the men of Hampshire, Bristol, and
Hastings, whose cooperation was, however, soon secured by the eloquence
of Hervey Glanvill. The northern crusaders thus re-united set sail for
the Tagus, and having disembarked at the mouth of the river, marched up
to join Affonso and his Portuguese knights. Even with this large
reinforcement, the King of Portugal had not sufficient soldiers to
blockade the great city, and he concentrated all his efforts on one
particular spot, where at last he forced an entrance on October 24th.
The resistance does not seem to have been very obstinate; the Moors of
the Belatha had been dispirited{53} by the capture of Santarem; those of
the provinces to the south were either distracted by internecine war or
paralyzed into inaction by fear of the Almohades; and Affonso was
allowed to achieve and consolidate his conquest.
In addition to its intrinsic importance, the capture of Lisbon is worth
noticing because of the assistance rendered to the Portuguese by the
English; it is the first instance of the close connection between the
two nations, which has lasted down to the present century, a connection
which makes the history of Portugal of especial interest to Englishmen.
After the conquest, most of the crusaders sailed on their way to the
Holy Land, but the Portuguese king, by liberal offers, managed to
persuade a few to settle down in his dominions, some of whom founded
great families. It was no wonder that Affonso was almost astounded at
his own success. Cintra, Palmella, Mafra, and Almada surrendered to him
without a blow in 1147; Alemquer, Obidos, Torres Novas, and Porto de Moz
in 1148; and he found himself master of the whole of the southern Beira
and of Estremadura. His great difficulty was how at the same time to
occupy and settle his new possessions, and to prepare for a further
advance, and it was only sheer lack of men that checked his conquering
career. Gilbert of Hastings, an Englishman, whom he had made Bishop of
Lisbon, went to England to preach the crusade in Portugal with the full
consent of King Henry II., but he did not bring many men back with him,
and Affonso had to wait ten years before he made his next decisive step
in advance. He spent these years in strengthening the fortifications of
his{54} new cities, and attracting inhabitants to them from his older
cities; nor did he forget to show his gratitude to the Church, which had
allowed its sworn soldiers to help him; for he founded, in 1153, the
magnificent monastery of Alçobaça, the future resting-place of the kings
of Portugal, and the finest specimen of mediæval architecture in the
whole country. All this time he was impatiently longing to take a step
further in advance and to capture the wealthy city of Alcacer do Sal. In
1152 he was beaten back in his first attack on that city; in 1157 he was
again repulsed, although he had the assistance of Thierry of Alsace and
a body of crusaders; but at last, on June 28, 1158, he was successful,
and reached the height of his greatness and prosperity.
During these years, in which he had been fighting the Moors, Affonso
Henriques had observed the terms of the Treaty of Zamora, and had
prudently avoided all interference in the affairs of Spain; but the
death of his cousin, the Emperor Alfonso, in 1157, which left him the
oldest and most famous warrior in the peninsula, seems to have tempted
him to abandon this prudent policy. The Emperor had divided his
kingdoms, leaving Castile to his son Sancho, and Leon and Gallicia to
his son Ferdinand, a division which also seems to have tempted Affonso
to believe he could play a part in Spanish affairs. His alliance was
sought on all sides, and in January, 1160, he betrothed his eldest
daughter, Donna Matilda, to Raymond Berenger, heir to the throne of
Aragon; and a little later in the same year he promised his second
daughter, Donna Urraca, to King Ferdinand; and{55} concluded the Treaty of
Cella Nova, by which it was agreed that each monarch should prosecute
his wars against the Moors independently, and that the course of the
Guadiana should be the limit between their respective lines of conquest.
This treaty was, undoubtedly, caused by the fact that the Moors in
Africa had again become united under the rule of the Almohade caliph,
Abd-el-Mumin, and that a great invasion of Spain by the Mohammedans was
to be expected.
This invasion occurred in the very next year, 1161. Abd-el-Mumin crossed
the straits of Gibraltar with eighteen thousand tried Almohade soldiers,
and after subduing the independent Mohammedan emīrs, inflicted upon
Affonso Henriques his first real defeat, and drove him back to Lisbon
and Santarem. The death of Abd-el-Mumin in 1163 again changed the aspect
of affairs. A disputed succession kept the Almohade warriors busy in
Africa, and independent bands of “salteadors,” who were little better
than brigands and free lances, began to establish themselves as petty
feudal princes in the various cities and districts of the Alemtejo, the
province south of the Tagus, which now became the battle-ground between
the Christians and the Moors. Affonso Henriques let them do as they
liked; he had a greater ambition, and as he had formerly schemed and
planned to take Santarem, Lisbon, and Alcacer do Sal, he now cast his
eyes upon the great city of Badajoz, although it lay upon the eastern
side of the Guadiana which he had agreed to leave to the King of Leon.
With this object in view he took Beja in 1162, Truxillo and Evora in
1165, and Caceres in{56} 1166, thus gradually working up to the city which
he coveted. King Ferdinand was not the man to allow these breaches of
treaty to pass unnoticed, and founded the city of Ciudad Rodrigo, to
command and threaten the north-eastern districts of Portugal.
But Ferdinand was at this time engaged in fighting his nephew, Alfonso
IX. of Castile, and Affonso thought that he could take advantage of him.
In 1167 he once more occupied Tuy and Limia, the two Gallician frontier
cities, which he had formally surrendered by the Treaty of Zamora; and
in 1169 he laid siege to Badajoz. This breach of treaty naturally
incensed King Ferdinand, who collected a vast army, and besieged his
father-in-law in his camp. The Spaniards were in every way successful;
the Portuguese were everywhere defeated; their warrior monarch, now in
advanced years, had his leg broken, and was forced to capitulate.
Ferdinand used his victory with moderation; he remembered what great
things Affonso had done for Christendom; and after two months’
captivity, he allowed the Portuguese king to return to his country on
his surrendering the cities in Gallicia, and on the left bank of the
Guadiana, which he had taken in violation of treaties. But the spirit of
the old warrior was broken; he was never again able to mount a horse,
and about the year 1172, he associated his son Sancho with him in the
government of Portugal, to whom he gave the title of King, and assigned
all the duties of war and the leadership of the Portuguese armies.
Sancho was however a mere boy at this time,{57} though he afterwards proved
himself a worthy son of his father, and it was necessary for Affonso to
take other measures against the Moors, who were now united under the
Almohade caliph Yūsuf. He first promised the Knights Templars
one-third of whatever they might conquer in the future, if they defended
the Alemtejo. But the Templars were too weak in numbers to do much, and
Yūsuf speedily reconquered the whole of the Alemtejo, and then laid
siege to Santarem. Here however he was foiled; the defences had been
strengthened with all the military skill known in the Middle Ages, and
the city was well provisioned. Yūsuf was obliged to retire, and when
he did so, Affonso, for the first time in his long career, made a truce
with the infidels for seven years.
When his son Sancho, who had in 1174 married Donna Dulce, daughter of
Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, and Petronilla, Queen of Aragon,
came to years of discretion, he broke this truce; and in 1176 he made an
incursion into Moorish Spain as far as the city of Seville, and brought
back much booty with him. This incursion revived perpetual fighting with
the Mohammedans, and for the next few years the Alemtejo once more
became a great battle-ground. In 1179, in which year Pope Alexander III.
affirmed the independence of Portugal by a special papal bull, the Moors
were beaten back from Abrantes; in 1180, they destroyed Corruche, and in
1181 they were defeated at Evora. The greatest struggle was yet to come.
In May, 1184, Yūsuf crossed the straits with the finest and
best-equipped Moslem army the Almohades ever brought into Spain; and in
June he laid{58} siege for the second time to Santarem. Pestilence defended
the Portuguese city, and on 4th of July, 1184, Sancho utterly defeated
the fever-stricken army of the Moors in a great battle, in which
Yūsuf himself was mortally wounded. A legend runs that Affonso
Henriques was carried in his litter at the head of the reinforcements,
that enabled Sancho to win this signal victory, which, whether he
himself were present or not, formed a worthy close to the reign of the
great crusader-king.
During these last years of the Moorish wars, Affonso preserved all the
quickness of intellect, if none of the bodily activity of his early
years, and as his son Sancho was always at war, he devoted himself
entirely to his last remaining daughter, Donna Theresa. The beauty of
this princess was sung by the troubadours in all the courts of Europe,
and her hand in marriage was eagerly sought by many suitors. In 1183,
the old king at last accepted an offer for her, and she left her father
and her country to marry Philip, the wealthy Count of Flanders. Poets
and chroniclers agree in saying that the departure of this dear daughter
broke the old king’s heart; he lived however to hear of, even if the
legend be unfounded that he was not present at, the last great victory
at Santarem, and he died on 6th of December of the following year, 1185,
at Coimbra. He was buried in the church of the priory of Santa Cruz, in
that city of which his friend S. Theotonio had been prior, and his tomb
has been rightly reverenced as that of the true founder of Portuguese
independence.
It is seldom the case that in one man’s reign a{59} small inconsiderable
county has grown into a powerful compact little kingdom, even during the
Middle Ages, and that the new kingdom should be perpetuated to modern
times is quite unparalleled in the history of Europe. This is what gives
the history of the reign of Affonso Henriques such unusual interest and
importance in general, as distinct from Portuguese, history. There is no
geographical or ethnological reason why the part of the Iberian
peninsula called Portugal should have formed an independent kingdom,
more than Leon or Castile. It was the greatness of one man which made it
an independent country. This is the first lesson taught by the Story of
Portugal, that nations are not always marked out by natural geographical
limits, or race divisions. The second lesson is, that a nation, which
has thus become independent, may under certain circumstances develop a
distinct individuality, which gives it a different character in every
way to its neighbours. It has been shown that chance, the foresight of
Donna Theresa and the greatness of Affonso Henriques made Portugal
independent; the course of the history to be narrated will show how,
while the other kingdoms of the peninsula coalesced into Spain, Portugal
remained independent and developed separately. Spain and Portugal are
now two separate countries with different languages, literatures, and
national characteristics; how they began to separate has been shown; how
they became finally distinct is now to be related.{60}
IV.
PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS.
CONVENTO DE CHRISTO AT THOMAR. (After a Photograph.)
SANCHO I., the Povoador or City-builder, had already won his reputation
as a warrior in his father’s life-time, and his fame as king rests
rather on the success of his internal administration of his country. But
before he had time to gratify his inclination towards the more peaceful
duties of government, he had to continue the life and death struggle
with the Moors. The great victory won the year before his accession,
gave him a little breathing space, and in 1188 he even proposed to take
part in the Third Crusade, for which great preparations were being made
all over Europe. But the Moors were not likely to forget their repulse
at Santarem, and in the same year Ya’kūb, the son of Yūsuf, the
new Almohade caliph landed in the peninsula, and marched without a check
until he was once more driven from before Santarem by the conjoined
influence of pestilence and of the courage of the Portuguese knights. In
the following year King Sancho took his revenge; he stopped at Lisbon
first an army of Dutch, Frisian, and Danish crusaders; then a body of
French crusaders{62}{61} under Jacques d’Avesnes, Bishop of Beauvais, and the
Count of Bar; and finally a well-equipped force of Londoners, all on
their way to the Holy Land—and with their help he not only reduced the
whole of the Alemtejo, but even took Silves, the capital of the distant
emirate of the Alfaghar or Algarves. Ya’kūb was astounded at these
successes. He collected a large Mohammedan army, and again crossed to
Spain. But ill-luck followed his advance; his army was badly equipped,
and not well supplied with provisions; he was foiled by one hundred
young London crusaders in an attack on Silves; he was driven back from
Thomar, the headquarters of the Knights Templars, by their Grand Master
in Portugal, Gualdim Paes; and was finally obliged to abandon the siege
of Santarem by a pestilence, which the Portuguese ascribed to a
visitation from God. But the great Almohade caliph determined to be more
successful the next time; he spent two years in Africa in preaching the
Holy War against the Christians, and in 1192 crossed to the peninsula
with the finest Mohammedan army which had appeared there since the days
of the Almoravides. King Sancho and his Portuguese knights had to oppose
this formidable invasion unaided, for the crusaders had gone on their
way to Palestine, and were there fighting under Richard Cœur de Lion,
and Philip Augustus of France. The Mohammedan soldiers advanced in a
triumphal march; they easily reconquered Silves and the Algarves, and
then swept across the Alemtejo, taking in rapid succession Beja, Alcacer
do Sal, the hard-won conquest of Affonso Henriques, and even Palmella
and {63}Almada—the cities which guarded the approach to Lisbon from the
south. Sancho, seeing that resistance was of no avail, was only too glad
to be permitted to make a treaty with the Moors, which fixed the Tagus
as his southern boundary, and the vast Mohammedan army turned into
Andalusia and utterly defeated Alfonso VIII. of Castile at the battle of
Alarcos in 1195.
King Sancho recognized the fact that the Moors, while united under their
great Almohade caliph, were too powerful for him to attack, and he
therefore turned his attention to the disputes among the Spanish
sovereigns, and to matters of internal administration. It is fortunately
not necessary to relate the history of Sancho’s wars with his Christian
neighbours. The independence of Portugal was now an established fact,
and the minute details of the various wars waged up to the year 1200
have no especial importance or interest, except in so far as they
contribute to a knowledge of the causes of the quarrel which ensued
between Sancho and the Pope. It will be remembered that the eldest
daughter of Affonso Henriques, Donna Urraca, had married Ferdinand II.,
King of Leon, and that she was the mother of Alfonso IX. This monarch
had commenced his reign on friendly terms with Affonso Henriques, and
his successor Sancho, and this friendliness had culminated in 1191, in
the marriage of Alfonso IX. of Leon to Sancho’s daughter, Donna Theresa.
This princess, whose virtues were such that she was canonized as a saint
in 1705, was thus first cousin to her husband, and as the canon law was
very strict against such marriages, Pope Celestine III. by threats{64} of
excommunication and of interdict, forced her husband to repudiate her
and to send her back to Portugal in 1195. This insult not only brought
about the wars with Leon, which have been mentioned, but left in the
mind of King Sancho a rankling animosity against the Papacy, which found
its outlet later in his great quarrel with Pope Innocent III.
His truce with the Moors in 1192, and his determination to abandon all
interference in Leon and Gallicia after 1200, left King Sancho time to
attend to the crying wants of his people. He recognized clearly that
there was no use in his pushing across the Tagus and conquering the
Alemtejo and the Algarves, when the little kingdom he actually ruled was
not half populated. During his father’s reign there had been nothing but
fighting, and except in Oporto and Lisbon, where a flourishing trade
existed, fostered by the frequent visits of the crusading fleets from
the north, and in the northern provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro and
the Tras-os-Montes, where agriculture survived, the scanty population
subsisted chiefly on the spoils taken in the yearly invasions of
Mohammedan territory. The population of the Beira and the northern part
of Portuguese Estremadura lived entirely in towns, or in villages
clustered round the castles of the nobility, and looked upon war as the
only means for obtaining a livelihood. This habit of mind had made a
nation of warriors, but it had left the land uncultivated. Tracts of
wilderness extended between the towns and villages especially in the
more recently conquered districts to the south of{65} Coimbra, and now that
the truce with the Moors had deprived the population of their chief
means of subsistence, King Sancho saw that it was necessary to revive
the pursuit of agriculture.
But, first of all, King Sancho devoted himself to the task of repairing
the old city walls, and to the foundation of new towns in commanding
strategic positions, which gave him his sobriquet of “O Povoador” or the
City-builder. This policy was dictated by the threatening attitude of
the Moors under the Almohades; for Sancho, like most of his
contemporaries, could not believe that the Moslem dominion in the
Peninsula was nearing its close, and he made every preparation for
resisting fresh invasions. His first care was to see that all the walls
of old cities were put into thorough repair by the citizens, and
adequately manned by the city militia; his next, to found new cities,
which should command important roads, wherever they were not already in
close proximity to powerful towns. Among these new cities, his
favourite, and the one which afterwards attained the greatest historical
importance was Guarda, which was founded to the westward of the
threatening Spanish fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo. In matters of city
government Sancho wisely followed the example of the Mohammedans in
continuing the old Roman system of municipal administration, which left
all matters of internal government entirely in the hands of the
citizens, and when he granted the lordship of a city to a bishop, baron,
or military order, he carefully regulated their functions, and allowed
them only to take a fixed share of the municipal revenue for fulfilling{66}
certain fixed duties, such as leading the contingent of the city in war,
or holding courts of justice. The rural districts he treated on a
different principle. He granted large tracts to noblemen, military
orders, and cities on the express condition that they should be
cultivated and populated within a fixed period under pain of revocation
of the grants. This plan proved effective in the Beira and northern
Estremadura, which King Sancho hoped would be sufficiently secured
against invasion by the great fortresses on the Tagus, Lisbon, Santarem,
and Abrantes, but was quite inapplicable to the Alemtejo. This province
he had, in imitation of his father’s policy, entirely portioned out
among the great military orders before its recapture by Ya’kūb. He
not only confirmed his father’s and grandmother’s large grants to the
Templars, Hospitallers, and Knights of the Sepulchre, but greatly
increased them; he showed especial favour to the Portuguese order of
chivalry, the Knights of St. Benedict of Aviz, which Affonso Henriques
had founded; and he introduced from Spain the Order of Caceres, to which
he granted Alcacer do Sal, Palmella, and Almada, and that of Calatrava,
to which he granted Evora, Alcanede, and Jurumenha, thus attracting to
his kingdom some of the most famous warriors of Spain. It was true that
the conquests of Ya’kūb had annulled the effect of these grants, but
the knights looked upon their possessions across the Tagus, as only in
the temporary occupation of the Mohammedans, and were inspired by this
feeling into redoubled alacrity in guarding the line of the Tagus, and
with an ardent desire for the war against the Moors to begin again.{67}
PRINCIPAL FAÇADE OF THE IGREGA DOS JERONYMOS AT BELEM.
(PRESENT STATE.) (After a Photograph.)
The latter years of Sancho’s reign were signalized by his quarrels with
his bishops and the Pope, and naturally enough since the Pope was
Innocent III. This struggle bears a close resemblance to the contest
between Henry II. of England and the Pope a few years before, and also
possesses an importance of its own. The main points were that Sancho
insisted upon priests accompanying their flocks to battle, and in making
them amenable to the civil courts. These ideas seemed monstrous to Pope
Innocent III., who sent legate after legate to demand Sancho’s
withdrawal of these claims and the payment of his tribute to the Holy
See. But Sancho had in his chancellor, Julião, a great statesman, who
had been the first Portuguese to study the revival of Roman law at
Bologna, and who had learnt broad notions there as to the extent of the
Papal authority; and he in the king’s name asserted the supremacy of the
royal power in everything, and even his right to resume the estates held
by the Church in Portugal. Pope Innocent declared these notions to be
heretical, but the king supported his chancellor, who in return took
every opportunity to support the royal authority. The lower clergy of
Portugal were not unwilling to comply with their sovereign’s demands,
and the military orders stood by him as a valiant crusader; his chief
difficulty was with his bishops, and especially with the wealthiest
among them. The bishops of Lamego, Viseu, Lisbon, and Guarda were all
poor, the latter not even possessing a cathedral or a palace in his
newly established see; but the Archbishop of Braga, and the bishops of
Oporto and Coimbra were ecclesiastical princes disposing of{69}{68} vast
revenues, and it was with them that King Sancho quarrelled. His quarrel
with the Bishop of Coimbra is worth noting, as affording evidence of the
superstitious disposition of even a crusading monarch in those times,
for it arose about a so-called witch, whom the king insisted on keeping
in his palace. His contest with Martinho Rodrigues, Bishop of Oporto, is
far more complicated, but need not be related at length. It is enough to
say that the bishop offended not only the king, but his chapter and the
people of his city, and that he was eventually shut up in his palace and
besieged there for five months. When he made his escape he fled to Rome,
and Pope Innocent III. forthwith placed the kingdom of Portugal under an
interdict. For a time, Sancho supported by his chancellor and by the
inferior clergy, who refused to obey the interdict, paid no attention to
the Pope, and went on building towns and castles, notably those of
Celorico and Linhares; but at last in 1210, feeling that his health was
declining and that he was about to die, he made his submission, received
the Bishop of Oporto back into the kingdom, and paid the Pope one
hundred marks of gold. He then retired to the convent of Alçobaça, where
he died on March 26, 1211, leaving a reputation as a warrior and a
statesman second only to that acquired by his father.
Nothing proves more certainly the assured position attained in so short
a time by the little kingdom of Portugal than the great marriages made
by some of King Sancho’s daughters, and the relations he entered into
not only with the kings of Spain, but with the more distant princes of
Christendom. It has been{70} noted that one of Sancho’s daughters, Donna
Theresa, married Alfonso IX. of Leon, and was repudiated by the order of
the Pope, because the marriage infringed the laws of consanguinity. The
same interference for the same reason took place with regard to her
sister Donna Mafalda or Matilda, who married Henry I. of Castile after
her father’s death, and was forced to leave him by Pope Innocent III.
The beauty of the Portuguese princesses was so famous that their hands
were sought by distant kings. King John of England sent an embassy in
1199 to ask for the hand of an infanta in vain; and Sancho’s youngest
daughter, Donna Berengaria, married King Waldemar of Denmark in 1213.
Not less brilliant were the marriages of his sons. The eldest, Dom
Affonso, married Donna Urraca, daughter of Alfonso VIII. of Castile and
Eleanor of England, and sister of Blanche, the famous queen of France
and the mother of Louis IX., the crusader-saint; the second, Dom Pedro,
married a daughter of the Count of Urgel, and became lord of Segorba;
and the third, Dom Ferdinand, married Joanna, Lady of Flanders, and
fought at the head of the Flemish troops by the side of John of England
at the battle of Bouvines. These alliances show how thoroughly Portugal
was recognized at this early date as one of the kingdoms of Europe,
although at the death of Sancho her southern boundary was the Tagus, and
she had lost all the conquests made by Affonso Henriques in the
Alemtejo.
The reign of Affonso II., “the Fat,” is chiefly important in the
constitutional history of Portugal, and is only remarkable for one
memorable feat of arms,{71} the recapture of Alcacer do Sal. On his
father’s death the young king, probably by the advice of the chancellor
Julião, summoned a “Cortes” or parliament, consisting of the bishops,
“fidalgoes” and “ricos homens” of the realm, which was the first regular
assembly of notables ever held in Portugal, for the Cortes of Lamego,
generally asserted to have met in 1143, is apocryphal. In the presence
of this Cortes Affonso II. gave his solemn adhesion to the final compact
which his father had made with the Church, and he then propounded a law
of mortmain, drawn up by Julião, by which religious foundations could
receive no more legacies of land, because they could not perform
military service. The new king proved to be no such warrior as his
father and grandfather had been, but he was very tenacious of the wealth
and power of the Crown, and he refused to hand over to his brothers the
large estates which King Sancho had bequeathed to them by his will. It
was not until after a long civil war, in which Alfonso IX. of Leon,
Alfonso VIII. of Castile, and Pope Innocent III. intervened, that he
gave his sisters their legacies, at the same time taking care that they
became nuns; but his brothers were forced to become exiles, and never
received the estates bequeathed to them at all.
Though Affonso himself was no soldier, the Portuguese infantry showed
how free men could fight in the great battle of Navas de Tolosa in 1212,
in which Mohammed En-Nāsir, the successor of Ya’kūb, was utterly
defeated; and the Portuguese statesmen, bishops, and captains determined
to take advantage of{72} the weakness of the Almohades after this reverse
to reconquer the Alemtejo. Fortunately for their purpose there arrived
at Lisbon in July, 1217, a great fleet of English, Dutch, and German
ships bearing crusaders to the Holy Land. The leaders of the English
crusaders were the earls of Wight and Holland, both friends of the
exiled prince, Dom Ferdinand, who had fled to his aunt, Donna Theresa,
in Flanders. Sueiro, Bishop of Lisbon, made an effort to detain this
powerful army, and succeeded in persuading the English division to stop,
though the eighty Frisian ships sailed away. The English knights and
men-at-arms disembarked at Lisbon, under their earls, and a Portuguese
army, not raised by the royal summons or commanded by the royal
officers, was led by Sueiro, Bishop of Lisbon, the Abbot of Alçobaça,
Martinho, Commander of Palmella, and Pedro Alvitiz, Grand Master of the
Portuguese Templars, to join them. The two armies formed the siege of
Alcacer do Sal, the city which Affonso Henriques had won with so much
difficulty, and which Sancho I. had been forced to surrender. The
defence was most obstinate, and in September, 1217, a Mohammedan army of
forty thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry came up to relieve
the city, under the command of the wālis of Badajoz, Seville, Jaen,
Cordova, and Xeres. The Christian and Mohammedan armies met in battle on
September 12th; the latter were defeated with immense loss, and were
pursued by the Templars for three days; the wālis of Cordova and
Jaen were killed; and on October 18th the city of Alcacer do Sal
surrendered, and its gallant{73} defender, Abu-Abdallah, in admiration of
the valour of the Christians, consented to be baptized.
In this expedition the king took no part; he was more bent upon filling
his treasury, a tendency which soon brought him again into conflict with
the Church. His chancellor, Gonçalo Mendes, who had inherited the policy
of Julião, and the chief officers of his Court, Pedro Annes, the Mordomo
Mor or Lord Steward, and Martim Fernandes, the Alferes Mor or Grand
Standard-bearer, encouraged him to lay hands on the great estates of
Estevão Soares da Silva, the noble and learned Archbishop of Braga. Pope
Honorius III. at once espoused the cause of the archbishop,
excommunicated the king, and laid an interdict on the kingdom, in order
to force Affonso to make restitution to the archbishop and to expel
Pedro Annes and Gonçalo Mendes from his Court. Affonso refused to
submit, and he was still under the interdict of the Church when he died
on the 25th of March, 1223. This avaricious monarch had devoted himself
to increasing the wealth and power of the Crown; to this must be
attributed not only his quarrels with his brothers and sisters and with
the Church, but the great constitutional measures which distinguish his
reign. It was for this purpose that he summoned the first Portuguese
Cortes to assent to his law of “mortmain,” and despatched the first
“inquiracão geral” through the kingdom to examine on oath into the
titles of all holders of landed property by sworn juries of inhabitants
of the vicinity, a proceeding exactly similar to the commissions sent by
Henry II. to inquire into cases of “mort d’ancestor” and{74} “darrein
presentment.” Yet the reign of this irreligious and excommunicated king
was marked by a revival of religion in Portugal. Sueiro Gomes, one of
the earliest followers of S. Dominic, was a Portuguese, and was sent by
his master to found branches of the order of preaching friars in his
native land, and though in every way checked by Affonso, he made much
progress in all the great cities and towns. Far greater was the success
of the Franciscan friars, who were introduced into Portugal by Donna
Sancha, one of the king’s sisters, who had taken the veil and was
canonized in 1705, and for whom Queen Urraca built two splendid convents
at Lisbon and Guimaraens. The order took deep root, and its fame was
sealed by the martyrdom of the five friars sent by S. Francis of Assisi
to Morocco, whose bodies were brought to Portugal by Dom Ferdinand, the
king’s brother, and were buried at Santa Cruz in Coimbra, where they
were covered by the most sacred shrine in Portugal.
Sancho II. was only thirteen when he succeeded his father, and, as might
have been expected during a minority, the turbulent nobility and
intriguing bishops tried to undo the effect of the late king’s labours
to consolidate the royal authority. The old statesmen and advisers of
Affonso II., Gonçalo Mendes, the chancellor, Pedro Annes, and Vicente,
Dean of Lisbon, saw that it was necessary to get the interdict removed
if there was to be any peace during the king’s minority, and prudently
retired into the background, and Sueiro Gomes, the great Bishop of
Lisbon, came to the front, and with the help of the pious infantas, the
king’s aunts, made peace with the{75} Archbishop of Braga and with Pope
Honorius III., who solemnly confirmed the crown to the boy king. The
archbishop then became the most powerful man in the kingdom, and with
Abril Peres, the new Mordomo Mor agreed with Alfonso IX. of Leon that
the Portuguese should attack Elvas, at the same time that the Spaniards
laid siege to Badajoz. The opportunity was a favourable one; a disputed
succession had resulted in a civil war amongst the Mohammedans both in
Spain and Morocco, and Elvas was stormed in 1226. At this siege the
young king performed prodigies of valour, and the Portuguese knights and
soldiers looked on him with admiration as a worthy successor of Affonso
Henriques. Confiding in the love and support of his people, young
Sancho, though only seventeen, then took the reins of power into his own
hands, and recalled his father’s friends to power making Vicente
chancellor, Pedro Annes Mordomo Mor, and Martim Annes Alferes Mor.
This change of power greatly disconcerted the party of the bishops, who
began to intrigue for the overthrow of the young king, but he wisely
continued to occupy himself with fighting the Mohammedans, knowing well
that no pope would dare to attack a crusading monarch. He tried in
everything, in his internal administration and his crusading ardour, to
imitate his cousin, Louis IX. of France, and this wise policy secured
him the protection of the Pope, who, in 1228, sent a legate, John of
Abbeville, Cardinal of S. Sabina, with full powers, and with orders to
rebuke the Portuguese bishops. The legate did his best to{76} settle
long-standing quarrels in the Church, and especially that between
Martinho Rodrigues, Bishop of Oporto, the old adversary of Sancho I.,
and his chapter, and showed his approval of the king’s advisers by
making the chancellor, Vicente, Bishop of Guarda. The legate also
expressed his satisfaction at the king’s favourable treatment of the
friars and the military religious orders, and as the bishops still
intrigued against him, he persuaded Pope Gregory IX. to administer a
severe rebuke to them by an encyclical letter. The people, the friars,
and especially the military orders, simply adored their young monarch at
this time, and it was impossible to foresee the catastrophe which was to
sadly terminate his reign. The most distinguished military orders at
this time were the Knights Hospitallers, whose prior, Affonso Peres
Farinha, was the greatest warrior of his time, and who, in 1231,
captured the important towns of Moura and Serpa; and the knights of
Santiago, whose valiant prior, Paio Peres Correia, in 1234, took
Aljustrel. But the king himself was the most ardent crusader of them
all, and his youngest brother, Dom Ferdinand, who from Serpa ravaged the
districts held by the Mohammedans every year, soon won a reputation
second only to his own. In these halcyon days King Sancho II. imitated
his grandfather in attempting to settle and cultivate the lands of the
Alemtejo, on the same principles that Sancho I. had acted upon in the
Lower Beira and Estremadura, while peace was maintained with the
neighbouring kingdom of Leon, where, indeed, the greatest men at this
period were of Portuguese birth, namely, Dom Pedro, the{78}{77} king’s uncle,
who was Mordomo Mor of that kingdom, and Martim Sanches, an illegitimate
son of Sancho I., who was the principal general of its armies.
GATE AND WINDOW OF THE MONASTERY OF BELEM.
Meanwhile the wise advisers of the youth of Sancho II. gradually died
off, and his Court was thronged with gay young knights and troubadours,
who filled him with conceit and encouraged him in foolish courses. The
first result of the removal of his old counsellors was to be seen in a
serious quarrel with the Church. When on the death of Sueiro Gomes, the
famous Bishop of Lisbon, in 1237, the royal candidate was not elected as
his successor, the king sent his brother Dom Ferdinand to the city,
where he burnt the house of the opposition candidate, João the dean, and
killed several priests; and the king’s uncle, Rodrigo Sanches, acted in
much the same high-handed manner at Oporto. Such behaviour was not to be
tolerated even in a crusading monarch, and a papal interdict was laid on
the kingdom; but prompt submission on the part of Sancho, and the
journey of his brother, Dom Ferdinand, to Rome to do solemn penance for
his misbehaviour, made atonement and the interdict was removed. The king
then once again turned his arms against the Mohammedans, and invaded the
Algarves, capturing Mertola and Ayamonte in 1239, Cacello in 1240, and
Tavira in 1244.
Unfortunately in the interval between these two last campaigns, King
Sancho paid a visit to the Court of Castile, where he fell in love with
Donna Mencia Lopes de Haro, the widow of a Castilian nobleman, Alvares
Peres de Castro, whom he probably married. This woman became the evil
genius of his life; the{79} king grew lazy and sensual, and his Court
degenerated into a hotbed of vice and intrigue. The connection was most
distasteful to the people of Portugal, and gave an opportunity for the
bishops and discontented feudal nobility to overthrow Sancho, whom they
had always hated, if they could only find a leader and obtain the
assistance of the Pope. Even his brother, Dom Ferdinand, deserted him in
disgust, and became a vassal of Castile, and his worthless courtiers and
favourites, while urging him on to despotism and vicious indulgences,
made him more and more unpopular. Pope Innocent IV., who had been forced
to fly from Rome to France by the Emperor Frederick II., longed to show
his spiritual power over some monarch, and was easily persuaded by the
Portuguese bishops that Sancho was both impious and cowardly. A leader
was not hard to find, and in 1245, the king’s next brother, Affonso, who
had settled at the Court of Blanche of Castile, the mother of Louis IX.,
and who had there married the heiress to the county of Boulogne, offered
himself to the malcontents as a candidate for the throne of Portugal.
The Pope then issued a bull “Grandi non immerito,” of which the terms
were used as precedents in depositions of the more important monarchs in
later days, and João Egas, Archbishop of Braga, Tiburcio, Bishop of
Coimbra, and Pedro Salvadores, Bishop of Oporto, went to Paris and
offered Affonso of Boulogne the crown of Portugal on certain conditions,
which he accepted and swore to observe. Civil war had already broken out
before the arrival of Affonso at Lisbon in 1246, when he declared
himself Defender of the kingdom;{80} Donna Mencia behaved in a most
disgraceful manner to the king, whom she had ruined; Sancho and the
Castilian troops which he brought to his help were defeated, and the
unfortunate monarch, whose early years had been so full of promise,
retired to Toledo where he died, deserted and unhappy, on January 8,
1248.
With such a commencement it might have been expected that the reign of
Affonso III. would have been a period of civil war and internal
dissension, or at the least of complete submission to the Church and the
feudal nobility; but, on the contrary, it was from a constitutional
point of view the most important of all the early reigns, and also that
in which Portugal concluded its warfare with the Mohammedans in the
Peninsula and attained its European limits. In short, Affonso III.
proved by the events of his reign to be essentially a politic king, if
not a high-minded man. On his brother’s death he exchanged his title of
“visitador” or “curador” of the realm for that of king, and, in order to
establish his fame as a warrior and a crusader, he at once prepared to
complete the conquest of the Algarves, where most of the acquisitions of
Sancho II. had been lost to the Moors during the civil war. Aided by his
uncle, Dom Pedro, and the Knights Hospitallers under Gonçalo Peres
Magro, he was speedily successful, taking Faro, Albufeira, which he
granted to the knights of Aviz, and Porches, which he assigned to his
chancellor, Estevão Annes, in 1249, and Ayamonte, Cacello, and Tavira in
1250. This extension of the Portuguese territory was by no means
acceptable to Alfonso X. “the Wise,” who was now king of Castile and
Leon; and after a{81} short war, Affonso III. consented to marry Alfonso’s
illegitimate daughter, Donna Beatrice de Guzman, though the Countess of
Boulogne was still alive, and to hold the Algarves in usufruct only.
Affonso then turned his attention to his own position in Portugal, and
determined to bridle the power of the bishops in spite of his oath at
Paris. Perceiving that this could only be done with the assistance of
the great body of his people, he summoned a great Cortes at Leiria in
1254, to which representatives of the cities of the kingdom were elected
to sit with the nobles and higher clergy. This Cortes is of the greatest
importance in the constitutional history of Portugal, and its
composition shows that Affonso III. understood, like Simon de Montfort
and Edward I. in England, that it was only by an alliance with the
people that he could check the power of feudalism and sacerdotalism. His
policy was rewarded; the bishops recognized the need for submission; and
with the consent of the Cortes, Affonso dared the interdict laid on the
kingdom for his second marriage, and forced the clergy to continue their
functions. Abroad he maintained peace through his alliance with Alfonso
the Wise, and finally, on the petition of the now submissive prelates of
Portugal, Pope Urban IV. legalized the king’s second marriage and
legitimated his son Diniz in 1262. He was everywhere honoured and
successful, and in 1263 Alfonso X. made over the full sovereignty of the
Algarves to him, when he assumed the title of King of Portugal and the
Algarves.{82}
FAÇADE OF LISBON CATHEDRAL. (After a Photograph.)
The oldest church in the city, as expressed by the proverb, “Velho Como
a Sé”.
{83}
The people now began to make their power felt in the Cortes, and Affonso
soon had to pay for the assistance which they had previously rendered to
him. In a full Cortes held at Coimbra in 1261, the representatives of
the cities boldly denounced the king’s habit of tampering with the
coinage, and compelled his recognition of the principle that taxes were
not levied by the inherent right of the king, but by the free consent of
the people. As a popular king, he completely mastered the bishops, in
spite of their ability and learning, and he was much aided in this work
by the orders and regulations specially issued by Pedro Hispano, the
great Portuguese scholar and theologian, who had been the king’s friend
when Archbishop of Braga, and who became a cardinal, and afterwards for
a short time pope, as Pope John XXI. After a prosperous and successful
reign, Nemesis came upon Affonso III. for his behaviour to his brother,
in the rebellion of his son Diniz in 1277, who remained in arms until
1279, when the king died in a state of despair, and of misery at his
son’s ingratitude.
During the reigns of Sancho I., Affonso II., Sancho II., and Affonso
III., Portugal attained its European limits, and started on the way to
become a great, free, and wealthy nation. The period of war and of
territorial extension in the peninsula was now over, and the period of
civilization was to dawn. Territorially and constitutionally, Portugal
was now an established kingdom; it remained for it to become civilized
and thoroughly homogeneous before the great heroic period of exploration
and Asiatic conquest{84} should begin. The kingdom and its people had
passed through the stage of childhood; now was to come its stirring
youth, in which the great qualities of the Portuguese were to be trained
and developed, before the period of glorious manhood was to mark the
height of its greatness.
{85}
V.
THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL.
NO better ruler than Diniz, or Denis, could be found for a country
which, after centuries of war, needed to have a period of peace and
quiet. He was a poet, and loved literature; he was a great
administrator, and loved justice; he was a statesman, and avoided
foreign wars; he was a far-seeing man, and prepared for the extension of
Portuguese energies beyond the sea by encouraging commerce; and, above
all, he saw the need of agriculture and of the arts of peace to take the
place of incessant wars, and in every respect he nobly earned the
sobriquet of the “Ré Lavrador,” or “Denis the Labourer.” From all these
points of view his reign is of vast importance in the history of
Portugal, for it marks the development of the people into an independent
nation, but, like all peaceful reigns of quiet progress, it is not
signalized by many striking events.
The civil war, which Diniz had waged with his father, was followed on
his accession to the throne by a fierce struggle between Diniz and his
brother Affonso, who disputed his legitimacy, which ended{86} in a
compromise. He then married, in 1281, Donna Isabel, daughter of Pedro
III. of Aragon, who was canonized in later years for her pure and
unselfish life. His reign is only marked by one war with Sancho IV. and
Ferdinand IV. of Castile and Leon, which was terminated in 1297 by a
treaty of alliance, according to the terms of which Ferdinand IV.
married Constance, daughter of Diniz, while Affonso, the heir to the
throne of Portugal, married Beatrice of Castile, the sister of
Ferdinand, but his reputation none the less stood very high in the
peninsula, as is shown by his being chosen in 1304 to act as joint
arbitrator with the King of Aragon between Ferdinand of Castile and his
cousin, Ferdinand of Lacerda. Still more interesting are the king’s
relations with Edward I. of England, with whom he exchanged many
letters, chiefly on commercial subjects, and with whom he made a treaty
of commerce in 1294. He had much correspondence also with Edward II.,
and in particular he agreed with the English king in 1311 that the
Knights Templars had been greatly maligned. When that famous order was
suppressed by Pope Clement V. in compliance with the wishes of Philip le
Bel of France, Dom Diniz took a course which demonstrated his political
wisdom. He recollected the great services which the military orders had
formerly rendered to Portugal, and bore in mind their influence and
power, and he therefore founded the Order of Christ in conjunction with
Pope John XXII. in 1319, and invested it with all the property of the
Templars, thus at once obeying the Pope and avoiding{87} a serious
disturbance at home. He showed the same wisdom with regard to the
knights of Santiago in Portugal, whom he persuaded Pope Nicholas IV. to
release from the control of the Grand Master of the Order in Castile,
and to establish on an independent footing.
These few lines touch on every important event, in regard to foreign
affairs, which occurred during the long reign of Dom Diniz, but they
give no idea of the progress of Portugal during this period of nearly
fifty years. Agriculture was greatly encouraged by the monarch, who
founded agricultural schools and homes for farmers’ orphans, and
established model farms. He did much by showing honour to agricultural
pursuits to raise them in the consideration of his nobility, and he
attempted to wean his people in general from the notion that war was the
only occupation fit for a free man. He undertook several important
agricultural experiments himself, established farmers in the still
barren province of the Alemtejo, paid special attention to the
cultivation of vines in the north, and planted the great pine forest of
Leiria by which he hoped to reclaim the sandy regions in that
neighbourhood. He was also a great builder, and did much to improve the
three royal cities of Lisbon, Coimbra, and Santarem, in which the Court
used to reside, and he built the towns of Salvaterra and Villa Real. In
administrative matters, the feudal system, under which the country
districts were ruled was left almost untouched, as were the charters and
franchises of the greater cities and towns, and the only important
measures passed{88} by the Cortes in 1286 and 1291 were still more
stringent laws of mortmain directed against the Church than that passed
in 1250. It was in the administration of justice that the greatest
reforms were introduced. The period of great chancellors, who were
statesmen rather than lawyers, which commenced with Julião, and included
Gonçalo Mendes, Vicente, and Estevão Annes, was over, and a new class of
chancellors was appointed. These men were invariably ecclesiastics, and
looked forward to a bishopric, as the reward of their services. They
were essentially lawyers, learned in the Roman law, which they had
studied at Padua and Bologna; and applying the maxims of their studies
to the common law of Portugal, which was largely founded on Visigothic
ideas, they began to build up a system of Portuguese law, of which the
importance became visible later. Diniz did not venture to abolish the
feudal courts, though he checked their abuses, and among other reforms,
he appointed royal “corregidors” in every city and town belonging to the
Crown in lordship, who were to act as judges of appeal from the feudal
and city courts, as well as to take charge of the police. His wise
encouragement of commerce appears in his commercial treaty with England,
and by his establishment of a royal navy, commanded by a new official,
entitled the “Almirante Mor,” or Lord High Admiral, which office was
first granted to a distinguished Genoese sailor, Emmanuel Pessanha.
But the greatest qualification of Dom Diniz for the sovereignty of a
country, which had at last got time to learn the arts of peace and to
become civilized,{89} was his affection for literature and his
encouragement of education. It was Diniz, who, in 1300, founded the
first Portuguese university at Lisbon, which after many changes between
that city and Coimbra, found its permanent home in the latter city, and
became the centre of literary influence in Portugal. The king was also a
poet of exquisite taste, and in the number, beauty, and variety of his
songs he proved himself the greatest poet of his Court. Educated by
Aymeric d’Ebrard of Cahors, whom he made Bishop of Coimbra, he shows in
his poems the influence of the troubadours, and not of the trouvères who
had thronged his father’s Court. He had inherited poetic feeling and
power of expression from his father, Affonso III., who was no mean poet,
and who is said to have written a powerful “sirvente” against Alfonso
X., but his father had during his long residence at Paris been impressed
with the poetry of northern France, and had invited trouvères only to
his Court. Dom Diniz, both by education and feeling, belonged to a
different school, and preferred the softer themes and methods of the
troubadours. With the Courts of Love which he introduced into Portugal
came the substitution of the Limousin decasyllabic for the national
octosyllabic metre, and the ancient forms were lost in the intricacies
of the “ritournelle.” But the best service done by Diniz and his poetic
courtiers was in developing the Portuguese dialect into a beautiful and
flexible literary language. The king went further; as he grew older, he
threw off the trammels of Provençal forms, and perceiving the beauty of
his people’s lyrics, he wrote some quaint and graceful {90}“pastorellas”
inspired by their influence, which are full of poetic life and truth.
The effects of the influence of Dom Diniz, in the words of a recent
writer on Portuguese literature, “pervade the whole of Portuguese
poetry; for not only was he in his ‘pastorellas’ the forerunner of the
great pastoral school, but by sanctifying to literary use the national
storehouse of song, he perpetuated among his people, even to the present
day, lyric forms of great beauty.”[5] Literary excellence and the growth
of a national poetry form the natural sequel of the attainment of
national independence; and it is interesting to observe that the king,
who peacefully consolidated the Portuguese kingdom, was the founder of
Portuguese literature. Camoens happily hits off in a couple of stanzas
the characteristics of his reign.
“See, next that Diniz comes in whom is seen
the ‘brave Afonso’s’ offspring true and digne;
whereby the mighty boast obscurèd been,
the vaunt of lib’eral Alexander’s line:
Beneath his sceptre blooms the land serene
(already compast golden Peace divine)
With constitution, customs, laws and rights,
a tranquil country’s best and brightest lights.
The first was he who made Coimbra own
Pallas-Minerva’s gen’rous exercise;
he called the Muses’ choir from Helicon
to tread the lea that by Mondego lies:
Whate’er of good whilere hath Athens done,
here proud Apollo keepeth ev’ery prize:
Here gives he garlands wove with golden ray,
with perfumed Nard and ever-verdant Bay.”[6]
{91}
Personally dissolute, as the nature of much of his poetry and his
encouragement of the troubadours and their Courts of Love show, the
stories told of the Court of Dom Diniz are far from edifying. Yet some
of them are full of romantic interest, and exhibit the more constant
love of the south instead of the airy fancies of Provence. Of these
stories, the most romantic of all is perhaps that of Donna Branca or
Blanche, the sister of Diniz and the abbess of Lorvão and Huelgas, who
loved a humble carpenter Pedro Esteves, and was the mother of a son,
João Nunes do Prado, who became Master of the Order of Calatrava, and
was beheaded by Pedro the Cruel of Castile. It is this story which has
furnished the plot of one of the most striking of modern Portuguese
dramas, Almeida-Garrett’s “Donna Branca.” The king’s favours to his
bastards, João Affonso and Affonso Sanches, whom he successively made
Mordomo Mor, and Pedro Affonso, whom he made Alferes Mor and Count of
Barcellos, involved him towards the end of his reign in bitter disputes
with his only legitimate son, Affonso. Open war at last broke out
between Dom Diniz and his heir-apparent, and a pitched battle was only
prevented by S. Isabel riding between the armies in 1323, and making a
peace between her husband and her son, which lasted until the death of
the great peace monarch, the “Ré Lavrador” in 1325.
Immediately on his accession to the throne, Affonso IV., the successor
of Dom Diniz, gave full vent to his rage against his half brothers, and
with the consent and assistance of the nobility of Portugal, he beheaded
João Affonso and confiscated all his lands, as well as{92} those of Affonso
Sanches, who had escaped to Castile. This act of revenge, or of justice,
as he called it, consummated, he settled down as a worthy successor of
his father, and fostered all the schemes of Diniz for the development of
Portugal. He also continued his father’s policy of peace with Castile,
and made a formal alliance with that country in 1327 when he married his
daughter Donna Maria to Alfonso XI. of Castile. This marriage did not
prove a happy one; the king neglected his young wife for Leonora de
Guzman, and treated her so badly that in 1336 Affonso IV. invaded
Castile. A terrible war was impending, when S. Isabel once more played
the part of peacemaker. Leaving the convent of Poor Clares at Coimbra,
whither she had retired after her husband’s death, she hurried to
Estremoz, where the two armies were facing each other, and made peace
between the opposing monarchs. Alfonso XI. promised to treat his wife
better, and the Infant Dom Pedro, the only surviving son of the King of
Portugal, was granted the hand of Constance Manuel, daughter of the Duke
of Penafiel. The strength of the new alliance was soon tried; for in
1340 Abu-l-Hasan, king of Morocco, crossed the straits to come to the
help of the king of Granada, with a great army. Alfonso XI. sent his
wife to beg for the assistance of the Portuguese chivalry, and Affonso
willingly complied. In the great battle of the Salado on 29th of October
the Moors were utterly defeated, and the two generals who were most
conspicuous on the Christian side, were Affonso IV. of Portugal, who won
the sobriquet of Affonso “the Brave,” and{93} Don Pedro Fernandez de
Castro, Mordomo Mor of Castile. This victory also marks an advance in
Portuguese poetry, for on it was written the first Portuguese epic by
Affonso Giraldes, the forerunner of Camoens.
It is interesting during this reign to notice the close intimacy growing
up between Portugal and England, which was to have many important
results. Directly on his accession, Affonso IV. determined to maintain
the friendly relations which Diniz had commenced, and in 1325 he sent an
ambassador to propose a matrimonial alliance with the English royal
family, probably with a view of contracting a marriage between his elder
daughter, Donna Maria, and the young Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward
III. The English Court, then under the influence of Queen Isabella,
replied that the ambassador was not of sufficiently high rank for his
application to be received. Accordingly, in the following year, Affonso
sent his Lord High Admiral, Dom Manoel Pessanha, and Dom Rodrigo
Domingues on the same mission, but their embassy led to no result,
probably owing to the disturbed state of affairs in England, and Donna
Maria married, as has been said, the King of Castile. Friendly
communications continued, nevertheless, between Portugal and England,
and in 1344 Edward III. sent two ambassadors, Henry, Earl of Lancaster,
and Richard, Earl of Arundel, to draw up a treaty of alliance with
Affonso IV. This was followed by the mission of Andrew of Oxford,
Richard of Saham, and Philip Borton to ask for the hand of{94} Donna
Leonora, the King of Portugal’s younger daughter, for Edward, Prince of
Wales, better known as the Black Prince. The marriage was agreed upon,
and in 1347 Robert Stratton and Richard of Saham arrived to fix the day
for the passage of the infanta to England. But at this moment
matrimonial alliances of more political importance occurred to each of
the high contracting parties, and in this very year Donna Leonora was
married to King Pedro IV. of Aragon, and the Black Prince to the Fair
Maid of Kent. The rupture of this marriage scheme did not break the
friendship of the two kings, both of whom perceived the wealth to be
obtained for their countries and themselves by encouraging commerce. The
business relations between the two nations soon became very close, and
the wine of Portugal was freely exchanged for the long-cloth of England.
On July 25, 1352, Edward III. issued a royal proclamation, ordering his
subjects never to do any harm to the Portuguese, and on October 20,
1353, a curious sequel to the commercial treaty of 1294 was signed in
London by Affonso Martins Alho. This young wine merchant had been sent
to England as representative of the merchants of the maritime cities of
Portugal, and the treaty he negotiated with the citizens of London was
one guaranteeing mutual good faith in all matters of trade and commerce,
with many other technical clauses referring to special lines of
business. The very fact of this treaty or agreement being signed is a
proof, not only of the close connection between Portugal and England,
but of the high degree of wealth, intelligence, and{95} business capacity
possessed by the merchants of both countries.
INES DE CASTRO.
The later years of the reign of Affonso IV. were marked by a fearful
pestilence and a sad tragedy. In 1348 the plague, or, as it was more
commonly called, the Black Death, reached Portugal, after traversing
Europe, and more than decimated the inhabitants of Lisbon. On January 7,
1355, Donna Ines de Castro was murdered in the streets of Coimbra. The
history of the various dynasties of Portugal is full of romantic
stories, some with ludicrous, and others with tragical, endings, which
illustrate, not only the characters of the respective monarchs, but the
tendencies of their different epochs. The story of Donna Branca, the
princess who loved a carpenter, has been told, with the comment that her
son became Grand Master of the wealthy Order of Calatrava; the romance
of Dom Pedro’s life ended more tragically. Dom Pedro was the only son of
Affonso IV. and Beatrice of Castile who had survived his first year. He
was born in 1320, and had married in 1336, in order to cement his
father’s alliance with Castile, the Donna Constance Manuel, daughter of
the Duke of Penafiel. In her suite as lady-in-waiting came the Donna
Ines de Castro, daughter of Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Mordomo Mor of
Castile, and hero of the battle of the Salado, and sister of Alvaro
Peres de Castro, first Constable of Portugal. Dom Pedro fell in love
with the beautiful Castilian lady, and though, during his wife’s
lifetime, he always treated his wife with the utmost consideration, and
was the father by her of Dom Ferdinand, afterwards King of Portugal, and
of{97}{96} Donna Maria, afterwards Queen of Aragon, it was well known at the
Portuguese Court that the love of Dom Pedro’s heart was centred on Donna
Ines. In that dissolute Court little attention was paid to the conduct
of the prince; princes were in those days privileged persons, and he was
known besides to have another lady-love, the Donna Theresa Lourenço, who
was the mother of João, afterwards King of Portugal. It was not until
after the death of his wife that it was perceived that Dom Pedro’s love
for the Donna Ines was more than the ordinary fancy of a prince, and was
an absorbing passion. For love of her, he refused to marry any of the
foreign princesses proposed to him by his father, and it is probable
that he went through a form of marriage with her after his first wife’s
death. However that may be, King Affonso determined to put an end to his
son’s infatuation by murdering the object of it, and by his directions
Donna Ines was murdered in the streets of Coimbra by three courtiers,
Alvaro Gonçalves, the “Meirinho Mor” or Lord Chamberlain, Pedro Coelho,
and Diogo Lopes Pacheco. This is the tragedy which Camoens has
celebrated in an immortal passage,[7] and which has since become a
common theme for the playwrights of the world, good, bad, and
indifferent; and it may be said, that it is not so much in the murder
itself, as in the events which followed it, that the most romantic part
of the story is to be found. Dom Pedro was absent on his estates in the
south when he heard of the murder of Ines. He at once collected his
vassals, and prepared to attack his father, but, as had happened in the
days{98} of S. Isabel, the Queen, Beatrice of Castile, interposed, and a
compromise was made, by which father and son agreed to see each other no
more, and to abandon active hostilities, and this compact lasted until
the death of Affonso “the Brave” in 1357.
The first act of Dom Pedro on ascending the throne was to punish the
murderers of Ines de Castro, and he induced the King of Castile to
surrender Alvaro Gonçalves and Pedro Coelho to him. Pacheco had escaped
to England, and could not be found, and thus escaped the fate of his
accomplices, who were slowly tortured to death in front of the royal
palace at Coimbra before the eyes of Dom Pedro. The king four years
later had the strange ceremony performed, which is far better known than
the circumstances of his love affair with Donna Ines. On April 24, 1361,
either to show his undying affection for her, or to confirm the story of
his marriage and legitimate his children by her, he had her body
disinterred at Coimbra, and conveyed to the Convent of Alçobaça, where
it was solemnly crowned, and then buried. It is usual to speak of the
Convent of Alçobaça as if it had been the burial-place of all the kings
and queens of Portugal up to this time. Such was not the case; only
Affonso II. and Affonso III. and their queens were buried there. Count
Henry and Donna Theresa had their last resting-place in the Cathedral of
Braga, Affonso Henriques and Sancho I. and their queens in the Convent
of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, Diniz in the Convent of Odivelas, near Lisbon,
S. Isabel in that of the Poor Clares at Coimbra, Affonso IV. and{99} his
queen in Lisbon Cathedral, and Dom Pedro’s wife, Constance Manuel, in
the Convent of S. Francis at Santarem.
The spirit of stern, revengeful justice which had marked the
commencement of the short reign of Dom Pedro continued to show itself in
all matters of administration; the king loved to dispense justice in
person, and the rigour with which he treated all culprits, noble and
priest as well as merchant and vagabond, won for him the title of “Pedro
the Severe.” This severity was not unpleasing to the people, and many
tales are extant of the king’s visits incognito to the law courts, and
of his rigorous punishment of unjust judges. Many of the famous stories
told in the “Arabian Nights” of the Caliph Harun-ar-Rashid are also told
of Dom Pedro, and in them his Chancellor, Vasco Martins de Sousa, played
the part of the Vizīr, as companion and butt. In matters of policy
Dom Pedro followed in his father’s and grandfather’s steps, avoiding
interference with the other kingdoms of the peninsula, and maintaining a
close political and commercial connection with England. His reign was
too short to leave much trace on the history of Portugal, for he died in
1367 at Estremoz, and was buried at Alçobaça by the side of Ines de
Castro.
The accession of Ferdinand, called “the Handsome,” the only son of Dom
Pedro by Constance Manuel, marks a crisis in the history of the
Portuguese monarchy. As a natural result of the long era of peace and
prosperity which had succeeded the final conquest of the Algarves, the
people of Portugal{100} had become more wealthy, more cultivated, and more
conscious of their nationality than almost any people in Europe while
the Court had become more and more dissolute, and more out of consonance
with the feelings of the people. If the Portuguese monarchy was to
continue to exist, it was obvious that it must again become a truly
national monarchy, as it had been in the days of Affonso Henriques and
of Diniz, which should lead the way in finding new outlets for the
growing energies of the people, and that the kings must remember their
duties, and not think only of their pleasures. The affection the people
showed for Dom Pedro, who was by no means a good king, but rather a
despot of the Oriental type, was a proof that they were ready to
recognize with gratitude the efforts of a just monarch, and their
energies, now that, owing to long peace, they were the richest nation in
the peninsula, only needed to be directed. Neither the priesthood nor
the nobility showed any disposition to check the dissoluteness of the
Court. The bishops lost their old commanding influence, as the Papacy,
on which they depended, became degenerate, and the nobles, now that they
had no longer wars to occupy them, either became courtiers and abettors
of the vices of the kings and princes, or else lived on their feudal
estates and imitated them. The people had now no share in the
government. The power which the Cortes had obtained during the reign of
Affonso III. was in abeyance, because the king did not need its help
against his bishops and nobles, but it was only in abeyance, and ready
to spring forth again into new life.{101}
The life and reign of Ferdinand “the Handsome” are marked, like those of
his father, by a romantic amour, which, if not so tragic as the story of
Ines de Castro, had far greater political importance. Ferdinand was a
weak and frivolous, but ambitious, king, who, after binding himself to
marry Leonora, daughter of the King of Aragon, suddenly surprised every
one by claiming the thrones of Castile and Leon in 1369, on the death of
Pedro “the Cruel.” This claim was derived through his grandmother,
Beatrice of Castile, and was good in law, and Dom Ferdinand was
favourably received at Ciudad Rodrigo and Zamora. But the majority of
the Castilians, both noble and plebeian, had no desire to see a
Portuguese monarch on their throne, and therefore espoused the cause of
the illegitimate Henry of Trastamare as Henry II. of Castile and Leon.
The war which followed turned to the advantage of the Castilian
pretender, and the contest ended in 1371 by the intervention of Pope
Gregory XI., when Ferdinand agreed to surrender his claim to the throne
of Castile, and to marry Leonora, daughter of Henry II. However, in
spite of the Pope, this treaty was never carried out, for at the
marriage of his half-sister, Beatrice, the daughter of Dom Pedro and
Ines de Castro, to Sancho Count of Alboquerque, King Ferdinand saw and
fell passionately in love with Donna Leonor Telles de Menezes, daughter
of a nobleman in the Tras-os-Montes, and wife of João Lourenço da Cunha,
Lord of Pombeiro. This passion was the king’s ruin, for the object of it
was a sort of Portuguese Lucrezia Borgia, of whom{102} horrible stories are
told, which historical research has unfortunately shown to be only too
well founded. At this very period, when she first met the king, she made
no attempt to repulse his advances, though she was a married woman, and
she bore an undying feeling of revenge against her sister, Donna Maria
Telles, for her attempts to repulse the amorous monarch. In spite of her
sister’s efforts, Donna Leonor managed to captivate the king, who, in
his infatuation for her, and in compliance with the dictates of her
ambition, refused to marry the daughter of Henry II. of Castile. This
refusal exasperated the people of Lisbon, who knew that the Castilians
would not tamely suffer such an insult, and a great popular tumult and
riot burst forth in the city. The story of this riot has been admirably
told by the chief modern historian of Portugal, Alexandra Herculano, in
one of his historical novels, and it affords a striking example of the
political foresight of the people, and of their conviction of a coming
revolution. The popular leader was a tailor named Fernan Vasques, under
whose command the mob burst into the palace at Lisbon, hunted in vain
for Donna Leonor, and made King Ferdinand swear to marry the Castilian
infanta on the very next day. But Ferdinand escaped the same night to
Santarem, and once there with his beloved, he forgot his oath, and sent
all the troops he could collect to punish the rioters of Lisbon. They
made but little resistance, being unprepared for their sovereign’s want
of faith to his plighted word, and Fernan Vasques, the tailor, and his
principal followers were beheaded. This cruel punishment inflicted, the
king betook himself to{103} Oporto, and there married the Donna Leonor at
the Church of S. João do Hospital, although her first husband was still
alive. It shows to what a depth of degradation the Portuguese nobles had
sunk that all the nobility, with the exception of Dom Diniz, one of the
king’s half-brothers, acquiesced in this bigamous marriage, and
recognized Donna Leonor as queen. At the head of those who submitted
were Dom João or John, the elder son of the late king by Ines de Castro,
and Dom John, known as “the Bastard,” the Master of the Knights of Aviz,
and the son of Pedro by Theresa Lourenço.
The people of Lisbon were right in believing that the Castilians would
regard the marriage of Ferdinand to Donna Leonor as a deadly insult to
their infanta. Henry II. at once invaded Portugal, and laid siege to
Lisbon; Ferdinand lived meanwhile quietly at Santarem with his queen,
and made no effort to intervene; and the war would have ended badly for
Portugal, had not Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, who happened to be in Spain
as legate, interfered, and by using all the authority of the Church,
forced Henry II. to retire, and to make a treaty of peace with Ferdinand
at Santarem. Even after this proof of the power of Castile, and after
the sufferings incurred by the people of Lisbon during the siege,
Ferdinand refused to keep the peace. He would not believe that Henry II.
was firmly established on the throne, and in 1373 he treacherously
renewed the negotiations which he had entered into the year before with
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This son of Edward III. claimed the
throne of Castile for his wife Constance,{104} the daughter of Pedro “the
Cruel,” and Ferdinand signed a treaty of alliance with Edward III.,
through his ambassadors, João Fernandes Andeiro and Vasco Domingues, by
which he agreed to support the claims of the English prince. But Donna
Leonor did not approve of the English alliance, and in 1374, Ferdinand
as usual broke his plighted word, and again made peace with Castile.
The queen was now supreme; her weak and vacillating husband was her
slave, and the tyranny which she exercised was odious in the extreme.
Her wealth was great, for the king had in his infatuation granted her
for her own use the lordship of many of the most important cities
belonging to the Crown, including Villa Viçosa, Abrantes, Almada,
Cintra, Saccavem, Alemquer, Obidos, Torres Vedras, and Pinhel, and she
had obtained great estates for her brothers, of whom the elder, João
Affonso Telles de Menezes, became Count of Barcellos, and the younger,
Gonçalo, Count of Neiva. Her former husband, João Lourenço da Cunha,
tried to revenge himself for the loss of his wife by attempting to
poison the king; she at once had his lands confiscated, and ordered his
execution, which he only escaped by a timely flight into Gallicia. Her
revenge upon her sister, Maria Telles de Menezes, whom she had never
forgiven for opposing her marriage with the king, was horrible in its
wickedness, and affords an indisputable proof of her cruelty of
disposition. Maria, who was as beautiful as her sister, and far more
virtuous, had inspired a real passion in the bosom of Dom John, the
king’s half-brother {105}and the elder son of Ines de Castro. The young
couple were married in 1376, and were as happy as they deserved to be.
Enraged at their happiness, and the more so, because they had a little
son, whereas her own sons both died in childhood, the queen set to work,
like Iago, to instil the passion of jealousy into the young husband. She
was soon successful, and Dom John murdered his wife with his own hand,
in his palace at Coimbra, while she was vainly protesting her innocence.
When the deed was done, the queen came into her dead sister’s presence,
and laughingly informed the unhappy wife-murderer that the accusations
were untrue. At this mockery, Dom John would have slain her, and on
being prevented by her guards, he fled to Castile. Donna Leonor had not
even the merit of being constant to her uxorious spouse, but carried on
an open intrigue with João Fernandes Andeiro, the former ambassador to
England, whom she persuaded the king to make Count of Ourem. Ines
Affonso, the wife of Gonçalo Vaz de Azevedo, first Grand Marshal of
Portugal, happened to hear a declaration of love made by the queen to
her lover, and she informed Dom John “the Bastard,” Master of the
Knights of Aviz. Some spy told the queen, and she determined at once to
rid herself of the pair. She had a letter forged, purporting to be
written by them to the king of Castile, full of treasonable passages,
and on the strength of it, she obtained the king’s order for their
arrest. When they were safely in prison, she tried to persuade her
husband to sign an order for their execution without trial. King
Ferdinand, who had a real affection for his half-brother, refused, and
Donna Leonor thereupon{106} forged his signature to an order for them to be
beheaded at once. Fortunately for Portugal, the governor of the Castle
of Evora, where they were imprisoned, Vasco Martins de Mello, refused to
obey, and the future saviour of Portugal escaped.
The wonder is that the Portuguese people submitted so long as they did
to this tyranny, and it shows how deeply they felt the debt due to their
great monarchs, such as Affonso Henriques and Dom Diniz, that they made
no attempt to overthrow their unworthy descendant. So strong was their
attachment to the hereditary principle, that at a great Cortes held at
Leiria in 1376, the queen’s only surviving child, the Donna Beatrice,
was recognized as heiress to the throne. This declaration was of the
greatest importance, for it governed the future rule of succession in
the kingdom; and by declaring females able to succeed rejected the
well-known Salic law, which prevailed in France and other countries. The
queen steadily encouraged the king’s ambition to sit upon the throne of
Castile, and when his hopes revived, on the death of Henry II., she
persuaded him once more to send her lover, the Count of Ourem, as
ambassador to England. Richard II. received him cordially, and Edmund,
Earl of Cambridge, next brother to John of Gaunt, and better known by
his subsequent title of Duke of York, agreed to bring military
assistance to the aid of Ferdinand. In 1381, the Earl of Cambridge
arrived accordingly with two thousand English men-at-arms, and, as had
been suggested by the Count of Ourem, his eldest son, Edward, afterwards
second Duke of York, was{107} solemnly betrothed to the Donna Beatrice, the
heiress to the throne of Portugal. The feeble Ferdinand, as usual,
refused to keep faith, and terrified by the approach of a Castilian
army, he deserted the English, who immediately began to ravage the
country round their camp near Oporto, while he made peace with John I.
of Castile at Salvaterra. By this treaty, which was signed on April 2,
1383, and in which the hand of Donna Leonor is clearly to be perceived,
it was arranged that John I. should marry Donna Beatrice, who was but
eleven years old, and that Leonor should be Regent of Portugal if
Ferdinand died, until Beatrice’s eldest son came of age. At the wedding,
which took place at once, Ferdinand was too ill to be present: but the
queen and her lover were there in his stead, and behaved with such
unseemly hilarity that many of the Portuguese nobility, headed by Nuno
Alvares Pereira, who was to be known in Portuguese history as “The Holy
Constable,” could not refrain from openly expressing their disgust. Six
months afterwards, on October 22, 1383, King Ferdinand died, and Donna
Leonor assumed the regency in the name of her little daughter, the Queen
of Castile.
VIEW OF THE PALACE AT LISBON.
(From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne et Portugal.” La Haye, 1720.)
But she did not hold it long. The whole Portuguese people detested her,
and their spirit of nationality was outraged by the contemplated union
of their crown with that of Castile. Dom John “the Bastard,” the Master
of the Order of Aviz shared both their personal hatred for the queen,
who had tried to take his life, and their political desire for
independence; and on December 6th, he headed an{109}{108} insurrection in Lisbon
and slew the queen’s lover, Andeiro, Count of Ourem, with his own hands
in the palace itself. The people everywhere applauded his action, and
attacked the friends of the queen; in Lisbon the Archbishop Martinho and
the Abbot of Guimaraens were killed upon the same day, and the example
was followed in the provinces, where among other notable murders, the
abbess of the Benedictine nuns was killed at Evora, and the Lord High
Admiral, Lançarote Pessanha, at Beja. Leonor among whose faults want of
courage could not be reckoned, fled to Santarem, and not only summoned
her son-in-law, John of Castile to her help, but began to raise an army
from among the vassals of her own adherents. At this news, Dom John felt
a momentary movement of weakness, and spoke of retiring to England, but
the people of Lisbon, through the mouth of the popular leader, the
cooper, Affonso Annes, so eloquently begged him not to desert them in
their peril, but to stay and be their ruler, that he consented on
December 16th, to remain, and named two of his wisest adherents, João
das Regras and Nuno Alvares Pereira, to the offices of chancellor and
constable.
Dom John then took upon himself the title of Defender of the Realm; but
he knew how little chance Portugal could have against Castile without
some powerful ally, and he therefore sent first Thomas Daniel and
Lourenço Martins, and then his Chancellor and the Master of the Knights
of Santiago to beg for help from England. The longed-for aid seemed
tardy, and Dom John proceeded to put Lisbon in a state of defence, and
despatched the “Holy Constable{110}” to raise an army in the northern
provinces. In 1384, John of Castile slowly entered Portugal with a great
army and joined Donna Leonor at Santarem. But the allies soon quarrelled
as to the government in future of the country they both believed to be
already conquered, and Donna Leonor recommended her adherents to join
Dom John. Not satisfied with this, she planned to poison her son-in-law;
but her intention was discovered in time, and the wicked queen was sent
by John of Castile to the convent of Tordesillas, in his dominions,
where she ended her days in 1386. This act of justice done, the king of
Castile laid siege to Lisbon. The resistance was worthy of the cause,
which was indeed that of the continued existence of Portugal as an
independent country. The priests fought at the head of their
parishioners; the archbishop of Braga behaved as a gallant knight; and
Dom John showed his fitness to be the monarch of a warlike people. A
terrible pestilence, which broke out in the besiegers’ camp, did more
mischief than the bravery of the besieged, and John of Castile had to
retire discomfited. But it availed little to have repulsed one Spanish
army; the relative sizes of Portugal and Castile, made it obvious that
the struggle would be a severe one; the independence of Portugal was at
stake, and the Portuguese fought as men fight for their existence as a
nation. The heroic Constable enforced the lesson of the successful
defence of Lisbon by his defeat of the Castilians at Atoleiros, but it
was felt to be necessary to take yet stronger measures, if the war was
to end in a triumph.{111}
The first of these measures was to legalize the position of Dom John,
the gallant leader of the people. A great Cortes was summoned to meet at
Coimbra, and in it João das Regras declared the throne of Portugal to be
elective on April 6, 1385. This proposition was agreed to by
acclamation, and after the Chancellor had produced a Papal bull,
declaring the children of Dom Pedro by Ines de Castro to be
illegitimate, the Cortes unanimously elected Dom John “the Bastard,” to
be king of Portugal. This measure legalized the position of Master of
the Knights of Aviz, who took the title of John I., and is known in
Portuguese history as John “the Great”; and the people believed the
measure to have the sanction of heaven when the news arrived that the
Holy Constable had won a great victory over the Spaniards at Trancoso,
in which four hundred Castilian knights were killed. The spirits of the
Portuguese were further raised by the landing of five hundred of the
famous English archers, under the command of three squires in the
service of John of Gaunt named Northberry, Mowbray, and Hentzel; but
this assistance was counterbalanced by the arrival of two thousand
French knights, who had joined the king of Castile. The two armies met
at Aljubarrota on August 14, 1385, and it was there that the
independence of Portugal was secured, and the House of Aviz made good
its title to the throne. The Holy Constable commanded the vanguard; Mem
Rodrigues de Vasconcellos the right, and Antao Vasques de Almada the
left; while Dom John rode from place to place and never failed to be in
the post of danger. Ten pieces of ordnance were used, this being their{113}{112}
first appearance in the military history of the peninsula; the English
archers did yeoman service, and repeated the glories of Crécy and
Poitiers, and after a hard-fought struggle the Spaniards fled in
confusion. Then did John I. feel himself king indeed; and he erected on
the spot where his victory had been won, the magnificent convent of
Batalha, which recalls in its name the famous Battle Abbey erected on
the field of Hastings. This victory was followed up by another at
Valverde, and then by the news that John of Gaunt was on his way with a
powerful English army. The Portuguese felt that they had anew achieved
their independence.
TWO SIDES OF THE ROYAL CHAPEL OF THE MONASTERY OF
BATALHA. (PRESENT STATE.)
On May 9, 1386, the Treaty of Windsor was signed by which the kingdoms
of Portugal and England were declared to be united henceforth in the
closest bonds of friendship and alliance; and it proved to be the
corner-stone of the policy of the House of Aviz. On July 20, 1386, John
of Gaunt reached Corunna with two thousand English lances and three
thousand archers, accompanied by his wife Constance of Castile, and two
of his daughters, Philippa and Catherine. He marched triumphantly
through Gallicia; and at Oporto on February 2, 1387, the
Anglo-Portuguese Alliance was sealed by the marriage of King John to
Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt by his first wife, Blanche of
Lancaster. This marriage was followed by another, that of Catherine,
only child of John of Gaunt by Constance of Castile to Henry, Prince of
the Asturias, and heir to the throne of Castile. These marriages settled
the peace of the peninsula, for in concluding them, John of{114} Gaunt
abandoned his claims to Castile, and insisted as one of the conditions,
on a truce between his two sons-in-law. This truce continued till 1411,
when at last the title of John as King of Portugal was recognized, and
peace between Castile and Portugal was solemnly declared.
King John “the Great” was now firmly seated on his throne; an effort of
his half-brother Diniz, the younger son of Ines de Castro, to overthrow
him in 1398, failed entirely, and foreign monarchs hastened to recognize
his power. Through this hero, and the race of heroes who fought under
him, the independence of Portugal was secured, and a new career opened
before its people. The era of consolidation was over; the era of foreign
discovery and of Asiatic conquests was to begin.
{115}
VI.
PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION.
KING JOHN THE GREAT.
(From his recumbent statue over his tomb at Batalha.)
THE reigns of John I., surnamed “the Great,” and of his two successors,
occupy nearly a century, during which Portugal was learning to become
the greatest nation in Europe. It was the age of exploration and
discovery, during which the acutest intellects and the most daring
natures in Portugal were dreaming of a new route to India, and were
endeavouring to discover it. It was an age of growth, abounding in
statesmen, mariners, and chroniclers, who were to have their successors
in the all too short but immortal period of Portuguese greatness, in
such men as Alboquerque, Vasco da Gama, and Camoens. The history of
these maritime explorations and discoveries, of the painful and slow
progress down the western coast of Africa, and of the great schemes and
efforts of Prince Henry “the Navigator,” will form the subject of a
separate chapter; but it is first expedient to study the history of the
Portuguese people and monarchy at home during this period, and to see
how, from the reign of John I., a new spirit appeared alike among{116} the
kings, and the merchants, and the soldiers, which was to culminate in
the glories of the heroic age.
King John, after the victory of Aljubarrota had firmly seated him on the
throne, felt it necessary to give Portugal such an interval of peace
after the great efforts of the Castilian wars, as King Diniz had given
it after the cessation of the wars against the Moors. This peace was
secured by a wise foreign policy, of which the key-notes were, a close
alliance with England, and systematic non-interference with the affairs
of Spain. He had seen the value of the assistance of England in the
final throes of his struggle with Castile, and the English monarchs on
their side felt the advantage of having such an ally as Portugal to act
as a thorn in the side of Castile, should the Spaniards come to the help
of the French. The{117} statesmanlike idea of Henry II. of England when he
supported the proposal of the Count of Flanders for the hand of the
daughter of Affonso Henriques, that this marriage should cement an
unwritten alliance of England, Flanders, and Portugal, against France,
Scotland, and Castile, seems to have been in the minds of the English
statesmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Just as Scotland
afforded a convenient base of operations, whether military or political,
for France against England, so did Portugal give a similar position for
the English to act from against Castile, and the subsequent history of
Portugal shows how generously and wisely England treated her southern
ally. The people of the two nations gladly supported the political ideas
of their monarchs and rulers. Each country could supply what the other
wanted. From Portugal, the English merchants could obtain fruits and
wines, which found a ready market, and the Londoners, not satisfied with
supplying the home demand only, distributed these products of the south
among the countries of the north, and notably in those lying round the
Baltic Sea, Sweden, Denmark, Pomerania, and Lithuania. On the other
hand, the Portuguese had no manufactures, and gladly took in exchange
for the productions of their fertile soil, the cloth not only of the
English looms, but of those of Flanders, in which the London merchants
dealt.
This alliance was maintained in spite of dynastic changes and political
revolutions in the two countries. In 1389 the name of the King of
Portugal was introduced into the Treaty of Paris as an ally of the King{118}
of England; in 1398 Richard II. sent a body of English archers, under
Edmund Arnold of Dartmouth, to assist in repelling the incursion made
into Portugal by the son of Ines de Castro and some Spanish knights; and
in 1400 John I. recognized his brother-in-law, Henry of Lancaster, as
Henry IV. of England, and was created by him a Knight of the Garter,
being the first foreign sovereign to receive that honour. In 1403 Henry
IV. solemnly ratified the Treaty of Windsor, and in the following year
the illegitimate daughter of John I., by Ines Pires, was promised in
marriage to Thomas, Earl of Arundel, one of the leaders of the English
nobility. This marriage was regarded as a further bond of alliance, and
was celebrated in 1405 in England with the greatest splendour. Equally
friendly relations were maintained with Henry V. and with the rulers of
England during the minority of Henry VI.; Henry V. sent provisions and
troops for the expedition to Ceuta in 1415, and in 1428 a strong force
of 144 lances was sent to join the King of Portugal. This English
alliance was the key-note of the policy of John I., and it was
maintained without a breach from the arrival of John of Gaunt in 1386
until the death of the great Portuguese monarch in 1433.
The internal government of King John I. was hampered in one respect to
such an extent as to vitiate the effect of his great administrative
reforms. It will be remembered that he was elected to the crown by the
Cortes, and followed to the field of Aljubarrota by all classes of the
Portuguese people. Yet for some reason he would not trust in the people{119}
who loved him, but believing he owed his success to the nobles who had
supported him, he began his reign by making extensive grants of lands
and privileges to his principal supporters of noble birth. It would
perhaps be too much to expect the political knowledge of a statesman in
the nineteenth century from a king in the fourteenth, but it seems to
posterity that King John greatly over-estimated the assistance of his
nobles, and that he over-rewarded them by granting them nearly the whole
of the old royal estates of the kings of Portugal. It may be believed
that he feared the secession of his nobles to the Castilian party, and
that he thought they could take their vassals with them, but whatever
may have been the reason, he gave them such enormous grants as to
seriously weaken the royal power. These grants however did not
impoverish the treasury, which was filled more by the proceeds of the
customs duties, a source of income, which his wise commercial policy
increased, than by rents from landed estates. So wealthy did he become
that he left his mark on the country in his great buildings; besides the
magnificent convent of Batalha on the field of Aljubarrota, he
constructed no less than four palaces at Cintra, Almeirim, Cezimbra, and
Lisbon. The last-mentioned city was his favourite place of residence;
under his fostering care it became the official capital of Portugal
instead of Coimbra, and soon surpassed the wealth of Oporto as a
commercial city. The citizens of Lisbon regarded him much as the
citizens of London did Edward IV. a century later; they never forgot his
gallant conduct in the great siege,{120} and were at all times ready to obey
him and to pay him a fair tithe of their wealth. In one respect
especially did King John gratify the aspirations of the religious
section of the people of Lisbon, by obtaining the sanction of the Pope
to erect the bishopric of Lisbon into an archbishopric.
It is not to be wondered at that King John loved to live in Lisbon, and
watch the daily passage up and down the Tagus of the ships, which were
making his capital a great commercial centre, when it is remembered how
slight was his actual power over the greater part of his kingdom. The
other cities were indeed fairly well governed owing to their possession
of ancient charters from kings, bishops, or lords, granting them a
system of municipal self-government, but the country districts were
ruled by the strictest feudal law and custom, and the king was powerless
to interfere. Now was to be seen the harm done by the monarchs who had
conquered the Alemtejo and the Algarves from the Mohammedans by the
distribution of their conquests in estates among the military orders and
private individuals. The result was the division of these provinces into
enormous feudal counties and lordships, dangerously large to be the
properties of subjects in such a small kingdom as Portugal. The
condition of the Beira was a little better, and the two northern
provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro and the Tras-os-Montes, were, as
they are still, the homes of the sturdy Portuguese peasantry, who gave
to the Portuguese armies and fleets their bravest and stoutest soldiers
and sailors. Bitterly did John the Great repent the mistake he had made
by his large{121} grants to the Portuguese nobility, and his consequent
inability to correct the most crying evils of the feudal system. He had,
however, at the beginning of his reign, some wise and able counsellors,
in the Holy Constable, in Lourenço, the brave Archbishop of Braga, and
in his great chancellor, João das Regras. With the help of the latter he
managed to get some valuable laws passed in the Cortes affecting
criminal procedure and jurisdiction, by means of which he somewhat
controlled the feudal methods of holding courts of justice without much
offending the great nobility, but he dared go no further in this
direction, and had to allow many abuses, inherent in the feudal system,
to continue to exist. In every other respect his administration was
extremely good; his cities grew in wealth; his navy increased in number
of ships; his sailors became famous for their daring; and in minor
points many reforms were made, such, for instance, as introducing the
use of the Portuguese language into the law courts, and changing the era
from that of Augustus to that of Christ, which made the date of the year
consonant with that of the rest of Christendom.
In such labours passed the first thirty years after the battle of
Aljubarrota, and Portugal and its great king became renowned throughout
Europe. During this period, a new generation grew up, the sons of the
men of Aljubarrota and Trancoso, and the young nobility burned to prove
themselves worthy sons of their brave fathers. In their aspirations they
were headed by the princes of Portugal. The union of the old royal
family of Portugal as represented by King{122} John, with the blood of the
English Plantagenets in the person of his queen, Philippa of Lancaster,
produced the five famous princes, whose names stand out conspicuously in
the history of the fifteenth century. The three elder sons of John and
Philippa, Dom Duarte or Edward, Dom Pedro, and Dom Henry, were in 1414
respectively 23, 22, and 20 years of age; they longed to win their
knightly spurs, and to show themselves worthy cousins of Henry V. of
England. The King of Portugal did not wish to check their ardour; he
felt the need of occupying the energies of his youthful nobility; and as
there were no enemies at home, he acquiesced in the desire of his sons
to attack the old enemies of Portugal, the Moors, in Morocco. By such an
expedition against the Mohammedans the young princes would show
themselves crusaders, and would find adversaries worthy of their swords,
without arousing the jealous watchfulness of the King of Castile. Ceuta
was the city of Africa selected for attack, not only because it was the
chief port of the Moors in the north-western corner of Africa and
threatened the south of Spain, but also because it was the headquarters
of the numerous corsairs and pirates, who preyed upon the already
growing traffic of Portugal with the west coast of Africa, and at times
made descents upon the Portuguese province of the Algarves. The
expedition sailed from Lisbon in 1415; the three princes were followed
by the flower of the Portuguese chivalry, and accompanied by their two
boy brothers, Dom John, who was but fifteen, and Dom Ferdinand not yet
thirteen; from her deathbed the Queen sent her{123} blessing, and in the
month of June the expedition safely disembarked on the African coast.
The Moors fought bravely on their native soil, and it was not until 24th
of August that the city of Ceuta was stormed, after a siege, in which
the sons of John the Great showed themselves to be gallant soldiers and
prudent leaders. This conquest was of importance in two ways; it was the
first conquest made by the Portuguese outside the limits of their own
country, and was therefore a proof of their energy and the expansion of
their power; but, on the other hand, it pointed in a false direction,
and was the first of a series of African expeditions, which were not
profitable to the country, even when successful, and which terminated in
the great disaster associated with the name of Dom Sebastian.
QUEEN PHILIPPA.
(From her recumbent statue over the tomb at Batalha.)
{124}
The conquest of Ceuta completed, the elder princes devoted their
extraordinary powers of mind and body to pursuits worthy of the cousins
of Henry V. of England. Dom Edward, so named after his
great-grandfather, Edward III. of England, the eldest son, married Donna
Leonora of Aragon, and helped his father in the duties of government. He
proved an apt pupil of João das Regras, the chancellor, and, after
devoting much time to legal studies, he drew up the first code of
Portuguese law. Dom Pedro, the next brother, who was created by his
father Duke of Coimbra after the storming of Ceuta, travelled all over
Europe, enjoying in turn the hospitality of Henry V. of England, of the
Emperor, and of the Pope, and astonishing those monarchs by his
abilities. He proved his valour by fighting beside the Teutonic knights
against the Lithuanians, in the extreme east of civilised Europe, and
his literary taste by his enlightened patronage of men of letters in all
parts of the continent. In 1428 he ended his travels, and settling at
Lisbon, he married Donna Isabel, the daughter of the Count of Urgel, and
assisted his father and elder brother in the duties of government,
taking special interest in the progress of literature, and co-operating
in all the various schemes for the development of Portugal. The third
brother, Dom Henry, created by his father, Duke of Viseu, and appointed
Master of the Order of Christ, and governor of the kingdom of the
Algarves, has left his mark on the history of the world as Prince Henry
“the Navigator.” This prince refused all the offers of the Pope, the
Emperor, and of Henry V., to visit their{125} courts, and established
himself in 1418 at Sagre in order to devote himself and his wealth to
the cause of discovering a continuous route by sea to India, which
should bring the trade of Asia and its profits to the Portuguese. His
efforts and the discoveries he superintended form the subject of a
separate chapter, but it must be remembered that in all his efforts he
was seconded by his father and elder brothers. The fourth brother, Dom
John, Master of the Order of Santiago, married his niece Isabel,
daughter of the Count of Barcellos, and became eventually third
Constable of Portugal. The fifth brother, Dom Ferdinand, who earned the
title of the “Constant Prince” in after years, was Master of the Order
of S. Benedict of Aviz, as his father had been before his elevation to
the throne; his piety was so well known, that he was requested to enter
the Church, and promised a cardinal’s hat by the Pope, but he refused
the honour, longing rather for the glory of a crusader than the
influence of an ecclesiastic, and winning in the end a martyr’s crown.
Their sister, Isabel, was as famous for her beauty, as her brothers for
their valour, wisdom, and piety, and was married to Philip “the Good” of
Burgundy, the founder of the Order of the Golden Fleece. To mar the
unity of this illustrious and gifted family, there existed a half
brother Affonso, the son of King John by Ines Pires, born before the
marriage with Philippa of Lancaster, who was jealous of his legitimate
brothers, and ultimately proved the evil genius of their destiny. This
son was regarded with special favour by his father, who brought about
his marriage with Donna Beatrice{126} Pereira, daughter and heiress of the
Holy Constable, and created him Count of Barcellos.
The latter years of King John “the Great’s” fortunate reign of nearly
half a century were marked not only by the discoveries of Prince Henry
“the Navigator,” but by the development of Portuguese into a literary
language by many talented authors. Mention has been made of the poetry
of the Portuguese troubadours, who sang in the reign of Diniz, and of
the first Portuguese epic on the battle of the Salado, which
foreshadowed the “Lusiads” of Camoens. But a literary language is formed
not so much by its poetry as by its prose; the early poetry of Portugal
differed but little from that of Gallicia, while its prose developed in
an independent direction. The first Portuguese prose work of any length
or importance was the famous romance of “Amadis de Gaul,” written by
Vasco de Lobeira, who died in 1403. This romance gave rise to a host of
imitations, and the taste for romances was further developed by the
popularity of the “Prophecies of Merlin,” and the Arthurian tales, the
knowledge of which came into Portugal with the English alliance. The
king himself encouraged this literary revival; the “Book of the Chase,”
one of the best specimens of early Portuguese prose was written for him
under his superintendence, and among his sons, Dom Pedro wrote poems,
and Dom Edward two excellent prose works, “Instructions in Horsemanship”
and “The Faithful Councillor.” More important to notice are the works of
the first great Portuguese chroniclers. Chronicles of early events in
Portuguese history had been written in monasteries, and have a value of
their{127} own, but these works are little better than annals noted down
year by year with no pretence to literary form. Next in order stands the
anonymous “Chronica da Conquista do Algarves,” which represents the
transition from the annalist to the chronicler, and in the reign of John
I., under the special patronage of the monarch and his sons, the first
great Portuguese chronicler, Fernan Lopes, who has been called the
Froissart of Portugal, wrote his chronicles of the reigns of Pedro “the
Severe” and Ferdinand “the Handsome,” and Matthew de Pisano, wrote his
“Guerra de Ceuta,” a history of the famous expedition of 1415. These men
were the forerunners of the great chroniclers of the fifteenth century,
Azurara, Ruy de Pina, and Duarte Galvão.
After a reign, which ranks among the most glorious in Portuguese
history, made famous by maritime discoveries and literary advancement,
leaving behind him sons worthy and able to guide the people along the
road of civilization to wealth and prosperity, John I., rightly surnamed
“the Great,” died at his palace at Lisbon on August 14, 1433, having
survived his wife Philippa of Lancaster nearly twenty years.
Contrary to the expectation of his subjects, the reign of King Edward
was but short, and it is marked only by a signal disaster. His own great
qualities, and the promise he had given of being both a good and a great
king when assisting his father, combined to raise the highest hopes,
which were destined to be cruelly shattered. On ascending the throne he
believed himself strong enough to take a step, intended{128} to check the
perpetuation of power in the hands of the feudal nobility, which had
often been discussed between his father, his brother Dom Pedro, João das
Regras, and himself, and in 1434 he summoned a full Cortes at Evora. He
there propounded the “Lei Mental” or the provision, which was assumed to
have been in the mind of King John when he made his extensive grants of
land to the nobility, namely, that they could only descend in the direct
male line of the original grantee, and should revert to the Crown on
failure of such heirs. The law was carried by the influence of the
king’s brothers, in spite of the natural opposition of the nobility, who
never forgave the supporters of the measure. In other matters Edward
simply followed the example of his father. He continued the English
alliance, ratified the treaty of Windsor, and was made a Knight of the
Garter in his father’s room; he maintained an attitude of prudent
neutrality towards Castile; he encouraged the literary movement,
represented by Fernan Lopes, and took an intelligent interest in the
schemes and plans of his brother, Dom Henry.
But, unfortunately, the king’s life was shortened and Dom Henry’s
explorations checked for a time by the fatal expedition to Tangier in
1437. This expedition was the natural sequel of the expedition to Ceuta,
and was undertaken in opposition to the advice of the Pope, and of Dom
Pedro. It was entirely the result of the earnest solicitations of the
king’s favourite brother, Dom Ferdinand. This pious young prince burned
with crusading ardour;{129} his one longing in life was to fight the
infidels, and he could not appreciate the fact that Dom Henry was doing
far greater work for the world in exploring the coast of Africa, than in
killing Mohammedans. The ardour of Dom Ferdinand won the day, and King
Edward collected a fleet and army in the Tagus, and sailed for the coast
of Africa. The object of the attack was Tangier and it was most
foolishly chosen. Ceuta was on the sea coast, and the Portuguese
soldiers could use their fleet as a base of operations, and could
retreat to it in case of need; whereas Tangier was three miles from the
coast. As might have been foretold, when King Edward with his eight
thousand Portuguese soldiers formed the siege of Tangier, the Moors at
once cut off his communications with the fleet, and in three days the
Portuguese army was reduced to extremities. It was only by Dom
Ferdinand’s willing sacrifice of himself as a hostage, that the troops
were allowed to return to their ships and find their way back to Lisbon.
This disaster and the captivity of his favourite brother so preyed upon
King Edward’s mind that he died in 1438. His death was happier than that
of Dom Ferdinand, who, after a long and cruel imprisonment, borne with
such heroic patience and exemplary piety, as to win for him the title of
“the Constant Prince,” died at Fez in 1443.
The noble conduct of Dom Ferdinand, who preferred death in captivity to
safety purchased by the surrender of Ceuta, the only alternative which
the Moors would accept, has its place also in the great epic, in which
all noble deeds of Portuguese heroes{130} are commemorated. Speaking of King
Edward, Camoens says:
“Captive he saw his brother, hight Fernand,
the Saint, aspiring high with purpose brave,
who as a hostage in the Sara’cen’s hand,
betrayed himself his ‘leaguer’d host to save.
He lived for purest faith to Fatherland
the life of noble Ladye sold a slave,
lest bought with price of Ceita’s potent town
to publick welfare be preferred his own.
Codrus, lest foemen conquer, freely chose
to yield his life and, conqu’ering self, to die;
Regulus, lest his hand in ought should lose,
lost for all time all hopes of liberty;
this, that Hispania might in peace repose,
chose lifelong thrall, eterne captivity;
Codrus nor Curtius with man’s awe for meed,
nor loyal Decii ever dared such deed.”[8]
The successor of King Edward, his eldest son Affonso V., afterwards
called “the African,” was only six years old when he ascended the
throne, and his reign commenced with a dispute as to the regency. By his
will, Edward had left the regency to his wife, Leonora of Aragon, but
this arrangement was not at all satisfactory to the people, and a great
Cortes at Torres Novas set aside the will, and appointed Dom Pedro, Duke
of Coimbra, to be “defender” of the realm with all the duties of
government, the Count of Arrayolos, minister of justice, and Queen
Leonora, guardian of her son, the young king, with a large allowance.
This arrangement shows how great the powers of the Cortes had{131} become,
and a still more important testimony to their recognized influence
appears in the motion by Dom Henry, that three members of the Cortes
should be annually elected to reside at the seat of government during
the months in which the Cortes was not in session. This arrangement was
highly unsatisfactory to the queen, who had expected to be sole regent
under the terms of King Edward’s will, and, assisted by the discontented
nobility, headed by the Count of Barcellos and the Archbishop of Lisbon,
she attacked Dom Pedro, and endeavoured by force to overthrow the
arrangements made by the Cortes of Torres Novas. The struggle was but a
short one; the people of Lisbon rose en masse to support the son of
their favourite monarch, John I., in whom they perceived his father’s
administrative ability and love for commerce, and the queen and
archbishop were forced to go into exile. The result of this movement was
to seat Dom Pedro firmly in power with the title of regent and the
guardianship of the boy-king.
The regency of Dom Pedro, better known by his title of Duke of Coimbra,
is marked by the same features as the reign of his brother Edward; in it
appears the same consistent attempt to check the power of the feudal
nobility and the same wise encouragement of commerce. His foreign policy
followed the same lines, and he maintained the same neutrality with
regard to Spain and the same close alliance with England. In 1439 the
regent solemnly confirmed the Treaty of Windsor in the young king’s
name, and was made a Knight of the{132} Garter, and the same honour was
conferred upon Dom Henry, Duke of Viseu, in 1444, and on Dom Alvaro Vaz
de Almada, Lord High Admiral of Portugal and Count of Arronches, in
1445. Dom Pedro also encouraged the maritime explorations of Dom Henry
and the literary revival, which were making the name of Portugal
renowned throughout Europe, and his power seemed to be at its height,
when, in 1447, his daughter Isabel was married to her cousin, the king,
Affonso V.
But the great regent counted without the enmity of the feudal nobility,
headed by his own half-brother, the Count of Barcellos, who was created
by the young king Duke of Braganza. This nobleman had always been
jealous of the legitimate sons of John I., and in spite of the kind
treatment of Dom Pedro, he hated the regent. This hatred he instilled
into the mind of Affonso V., who was rather restive under his uncle’s
control, and he eventually persuaded the young king that his uncle and
father-in-law had poisoned both his father, King Edward, and his mother,
Donna Leonora. Affonso V. believed these libels, and ordered the great
regent to leave the Court. Dom Pedro obeyed; but the vengeance of the
Duke of Braganza was not yet satisfied, and he gladly led an army to
arrest the Duke of Coimbra on his estates. Dom Pedro, deserted by all
his old friends and sycophants, except the Lord High Admiral, yet
determined to fight, and he defeated the Duke of Braganza at Penella.
Affonso V. then declared his former guardian a traitor, and summoned the
feudal nobility to his side. The nobles{133} were only too happy to aid him,
and in the hotly-contested battle of Alfarrobeira the friends of the
regent were defeated, and Dom Pedro, Dom Jaymé, his only son, and the
Lord High Admiral, were slain, on May 21, 1449.
Affonso V., at the beginning of his personal government, yielded to the
influence of the Duke of Braganza and his sons, who humoured his desire
for knightly fame and his dream of sitting on the throne of Castile, and
who obtained vast grants of royal property for themselves. Among them
they secured the lordships of the old royal city of Guimaraens, the
birthplace of Affonso Henriques, and even of Oporto, the second city of
the kingdom; but they never got possession of the latter, owing to the
fierce resistance of the citizens. The young king’s main idea at this
time was to win fame as a knight and a crusader, and unfortunately this
whim led him towards the country which was to be the tomb of his
dynasty. It was to raise funds for the expeditions which won him the
title of “the African” that Affonso first issued the beautiful coins
known as crusados, and with money raised by this means he paid the
expenses of his three expeditions. In the first of these adventures, in
1458, he took Alcazar es Seghir, or Alcacer Seguier; in the second, in
1464, he failed; and in the third, in 1471, he took Anafe, Tangier, and
Arzila. It was in these expeditions that he uselessly exhausted the
strength of his people, but nevertheless the works of maritime
exploration went on apace, though with less energy after the death of
Dom Henry “the Navigator” in 1460.{134}
From wasting the power of his kingdom in African wars Affonso V. turned
to a still more fatal pursuit, the encouragement of his dream of sitting
on the throne of Castile. The lessons of his grandfather’s reign were
lost on him; he failed to understand that the two countries had
developed on separate lines and could not coalesce, and did not see that
in a contest Portugal, owing to her smaller population, must needs have
the worst of it, unless the war were national and calculated to rouse
the spirit of enthusiasm and not merely dynastic. His family was now at
the height of its fame—his aunt Isabel was Duchess of Burgundy; his
eldest sister had married the Emperor Frederick III.; his youngest
sister had married Henry IV. of Castile; and his remaining sister,
Catherine, had been sought in marriage by the son of the King of Aragon
and by Edward IV. of England. His first wife, Isabel, the daughter of
the great regent, Dom Pedro, had died in 1455, after giving birth to the
prince who was to be John II., and it was not until after his third
expedition to Africa that he contemplated a fresh marriage, which should
give him a claim to the succession to the throne of Castile.
With this idea Affonso V. married his own niece, Joanna, elder daughter
of Henry IV. of Castile (though but a girl of thirteen), in 1475, and he
claimed the kingdom of Castile in her name. But the Castilians preferred
the Infanta Isabella, who had married Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and
they were as determined to prevent a Portuguese king from sitting upon
their throne, as the century before the Portuguese had been against the
union of their{135} country with Castile. The Castilians, fighting for their
independence, as utterly defeated the Portuguese at Toro in 1476 as the
Portuguese had defeated them at Aljubarrota in 1385. Affonso hurried to
France, to beg help from Louis XI.; but his supplication was unheeded,
and in 1478 he found himself constrained to sign the Treaty of
Alcantara, by which he agreed to send his newly-married bride to a
convent. He remained inconsolable at this failure of his schemes, and
alternately abdicated and returned to the throne, until his death in
1481.
The “Ré Cavelleiro,” or knightly king, had thus done his best to upset
the results of the wise policy of his grandfather, John “the Great.”
Fortunately he had not done much harm, and his son and successor, John
II., proved himself able to do more than compensate for his father’s
mistakes. But it must not be considered that Affonso V. was a worthless
king of the type of Ferdinand “the Handsome”; he was rather a restless
knight after the fashion of Count Henry of Burgundy. He had literary
tastes as well; he wrote much and ably on various subjects, and showed a
great knowledge of what a king ought to be—perhaps learnt from the
“Cyropaedia” of Xenophon, which had been specially translated for his
instruction by the orders of the Duke of Coimbra. He was a liberal
patron of men of letters, and made Duarte Galvão “Chronista Mor do
Reino,” or Chronicler-General of the kingdom; and he appointed Azurara,
another chronicler, librarian and keeper of the archives at the Torre
del Tombo. He collected a great library at Evora, and founded the Order
of{138}{137}{136} the Tower and Sword; but perhaps the truest sign of the greatness
which existed somewhere in his character is to be found in his answer to
the chronicler Acenheiro, who asked how he should write the chronicle of
his reign, when he said simply, “Tell the truth.”
These, then, were the kings who reigned in Portugal during the age of
discovery. It is now time to see the nature, extent, and value of these
discoveries, which were paving the way for the heroic age of Portuguese
history.
PORTUGUESE GOLD COINS.
(1) Crown piece of John V.
(2) Crusado (400 reis) value = 2s.
(3) Crusado novo.
(4) Eight tostoêns piece (80 reis).
(5) Quartinho d’ouro (1,200 reis).
(6) Sixteen tostoêns, value = 8s. 10d.
(7) Half moidore piece. |
(8) Half moidore of Maria. 1777.
(9) Moidore of John V. 1724.
(10) Gold piece of 77 tostoêns, value = £1 15s. 6d.
(11) Two-and-a-half moidore piece, value = £3 2s.
(12) Dobrão of John V., value = £3 11s.
(13) Five moidore piece, value = £6 5s. |
{139}
TABLE I. The Descendants of John “the Great.”
{140}
VII.
THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS.
THE internal history of Portugal under the rule of John “the Great,” his
son Edward, and his grandson Affonso V., has an interest of its own, yet
it is not at home that the most important development of Portuguese
energy is to be perceived. Great as were the services rendered to
Portugal by King John, they mark no stages in the progress of Europe as
the achievements of Dom Henry, his son, have done. Around the name of
this prince, the discoveries of the Portuguese navigators may best be
grouped, for he was the guiding spirit of these adventurers, and alike
inspired and rewarded them.
Henry, Duke of Viseu, Grand Master of the Order of Christ, and governor
of the Algarves, was the third son of John “the Great” and Philippa of
Lancaster, and after winning great credit in the capture of Ceuta, he
took up his residence at Sagre, near Cape St. Vincent, in 1418, and
devoted himself to the task of maritime exploration. His father and his
brothers assisted him, but they recognized his special fitness for the
work, and therefore, though encouraging him as much{141} as possible, they
did not interfere with his projects, and made no attempts to contest his
well-earned title of Prince Henry “the Navigator.”[9] The prince was too
wise to neglect scientific knowledge, and he therefore summoned learned
mathematicians and astronomers from all parts of Europe to his aid.
Enjoying immense wealth, he established an observatory and a school of
navigation at Sagre, where he employed the men of science in making
charts and, above all, in improving the working of the compass. This was
the theoretical side of his work; the practical was not less important.
He collected together all the most daring captains and mariners he could
find, and sent them forth year by year on voyages of discovery along the
western coast of Africa. He never went on any of these expeditions in
person, but he was acknowledged by all the men of science and sailors in
his pay to be their master and presiding genius.
ST. SALVADOR IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
(From Braun and Hohenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum. 1574.)
The idea in Prince Henry’s mind was that it was possible to sail round
Africa to India, and thus trade directly with the East, and he died
after more than forty years of endeavour without having fulfilled his
dreams. There were legends of old time, which he knew well, that the
southern continent could be sailed round, legends probably founded on
the tales of Carthaginian sailors, but no geographer of that period
could assert that these legends were founded upon fact. If it were true,
and ships could sail direct from{143}{142} Lisbon to India, it was easy to see
what enormous profits must accrue to the people who found and followed
this route. At that time the products of the East came by a long and
dangerous journey to Venice, whence they were distributed over Europe.
They had either to be conveyed by land all the way to the Levant, or
else to be borne up the Red Sea and carried across Egypt. By either way
the expenses and risk were enormous, and the prices of the commodities
of the East were proportionately great. Could a direct sea route be
discovered, it was obvious that these risks and expenses would be
avoided, and that Lisbon would take the place of Venice as the
distributor of the treasures of the East to Europe. Dom Henry understood
this, and, urged by patriotism, as well as by an ardent zeal for the
cause of exploration, he devoted his wealth and time to discovering this
direct sea route. As has been said, he did not himself succeed in
attaining this great end, but he did much towards it, and the navigators
who were successful, Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral, were men
imbued with his ideas and in a way his disciples. In speaking of the
explorers of Prince Henry’s time, the word “ship” must not be taken to
mean the comparatively well-built and well-appointed vessels of the end
of the sixteenth century. Modern sailors would think but little of
Drake’s famous ship the Pelican, yet it was far superior in size and
equipments to the wretched sailing boats of the first explorers of the
fifteenth century. The enterprise of Dom Henry did much to improve the
ship-building of the Portuguese, and towards the end{144} of his life their
vessels could carry as many as sixty men, but at the beginning of his
career his ships were little better than half-decked sailing boats, with
a crew of at most thirty-six sailors.
A mere record of discoveries, a list of names of places along the
inhospitable west coast of Africa, may be monotonous in itself; but when
the scanty means of these early Portuguese mariners is considered, and
the greatness of the goal at which they were aiming, a fresh interest
arises in the study of the map of Africa. The first-fruits of Prince
Henry’s exploring ardour were the discovery of the island of Porto Santo
by Bartholomeu Perestrello, in 1419, and of the more important island of
Madeira by João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz, in 1420. These
successes delighted Prince Henry and his father, and John “the Great”
immediately granted the two islands to the Order of Christ, of which his
son was Grand Master. Prince Henry at once rewarded his captains, and
leased Porto Santo to Perestrello, and Madeira in equal parts to its two
discoverers. The provinces of the larger island were named Funchal, from
“funcho,” the Portuguese word for fennel which abounds there, and
Machico, said to be derived from the Englishman, Robert Machin. Prince
Henry’s first effort, before proceeding further with his explorations,
was to colonize these two islands. With Porto Santo he was not
successful, for the rabbits introduced by Perestrello ate up the whole
produce of the island; and a similar fate seemed to await Madeira, where
the indigenous vegetation was almost entirely destroyed by a great fire,
which lasted seven years. However,{145} he did not despair, and it was Dom
Henry who had the sugar-cane and the vine, which are to this day the
chief sources of its wealth, introduced into Madeira.
It is but fair to mention that many authors have held these great
discoveries to be merely re-discoveries. Some people affirm that Madeira
was really discovered by Emmanuel Pessanha, the first Lord High Admiral
of Portugal, in 1351, during the reign of Affonso “the Brave,” and there
seems to be more foundation for the story of Robert Machin, which is at
all events of great antiquity. The story runs that Robert Machin, son of
a merchant in Bristol, loved and was beloved by a lady of noble birth,
whose relations refused to countenance him, and threw him into prison.
About the year 1370, on his release, he found that his lady love had
married a wealthy baron, but he continued his suit and she consented to
elope with him. He took her on board a ship intending to go to France,
but a gale came on and the ship, after being driven south for thirteen
days, struck upon an island. They found the island uninhabited and very
beautiful, and Machin and some of his companions took up their residence
upon it, and built huts under the branches of a spreading tree. Here
they lived very happily until a storm one day drove the ship from its
moorings, which so grieved the lady that she died in despair at the
thought of never seeing her native land again. She was buried beneath
the tree, and Machin soon followed her to the grave, having first
erected a cross with a brief inscription, narrating his adventures, and
begging any Christians who might come to the island to erect a church
over the place where her remains rested.{146} After his death, those of his
companions, who remained, determined to try to escape in the ship’s
boat, but they were taken by a Moorish cruiser and sold for slaves.
While in captivity in Morocco, one of the Englishmen told a Spanish
fellow-captive, named Juan Morales, the whole history, and this Morales,
being afterwards taken prisoner by João Gonçalves Zarco, related the
narrative to his captor and to Prince Henry. Morales, according to this
tale, was the pilot of Zarco and Tristão Vaz on their voyage of
discovery, and the story goes on to say that the grave of the two
English lovers was discovered, and that Machin’s dying desire was
fulfilled, and a church erected over their remains. Whatever may be the
truth of this legend, and whether Machin ever landed on Madeira or not,
the fact remains that the first occupation of the island, and its being
marked upon the chart, were due to the enterprise of Prince Henry.
The discovery of these islands formed no part of Prince Henry’s plan.
His desire was to circumnavigate Africa; the expeditions of Perestrello,
Zarco, and Tristão Vaz were all intended to sail south and double Cape
Bojador, and it was certainly in an attempt to achieve this purpose that
Perestrello was driven out to sea to the island of Porto Santo. Many
years passed, during which Cape Bojador remained the great obstacle to
the Portuguese mariners. Year after year Prince Henry despatched fleets
of two or three ships at a time, which sometimes made important
discoveries among the islands off the north-west coast of Africa, but
they{147} never doubled the great cape. Among these discoveries the most
important were the Canary Islands and the Azores. With regard to the
former group, the Portuguese were met by a prior claim on the part of
Castile; and after a dispute, into the details of which it is not
necessary to enter, John the Great, in pursuance of his consistent
policy of maintaining peace with Spain, and at the request of Dom Henry,
who did not wish to waste his strength in occupying islands, surrendered
the Canary Islands to Castile. The Portuguese, however, successfully
maintained their claim to the Azores, which still belong to them. This
group was first touched at by Bartholomeu Perestrello, the discoverer of
Porto Santo, in 1431; and in the following year Gonçalo Velho Cabral
discovered the island of Santa Maria. To this captain was allotted the
task of further exploring and occupying this cluster of islands; and in
1444 he discovered the island of St. Miguel or St. Michael, where he
founded the beautiful little town which gives its name to the St.
Michael oranges.
Prince Henry’s endeavours were crowned with partial success, though not
in the reign of his father, for in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador,
and in 1436 Affonso Gonçalves Baldaya reached the Rio d’Ouro. The
attention of “the Navigator” was, however, soon absorbed by the progress
of political affairs at home, and he had for a time to abandon his
schemes of exploration. He served with distinction in the unfortunate
expedition to Tangier, and then played an important part in the events,
which ended in confirming the power of his brother Dom Pedro,{148} the Duke
of Coimbra, as Regent of Portugal. This enlightened prince took the
greatest interest in the African explorations, and he assisted Prince
Henry with even greater ardour than King John or King Edward. These were
the most successful years of Prince Henry’s career. In 1441 Antão
Gonçalves went a hundred leagues further than the Rio d’Ouro, and in the
same year Nuno Tristão, the greatest and most daring of all Prince
Henry’s captains, reached the cape which closes on the south the sort of
shoulder formed by North-west Africa, and named it the Cabo Branco or
White Cape. He did more than this; he brought home several captives,
including a native prince. The capture was hailed with enthusiasm, and
from this time the slave trade on the coast of Africa really began.
It is strange that Prince Henry “the Navigator” should have been the
founder of the African slave trade, but so it was, and the reasons are
not hard to find. The provinces of the Alemtejo and the Algarves had
never been thoroughly populated since their conquest, and the great
lords and religious military orders, the owners of those districts, had
never been able to bring them properly under cultivation. Slavery was
not regarded with the modern sentiment of abhorrence; it was the natural
fate of prisoners of war, and flourished greatly in the neighbouring
country of Morocco. Prince Henry and the Duke of Coimbra felt the need
of procuring labour to cultivate the southern provinces, and it seemed
quite natural to them to carry off the unfortunate savages of the
African coast. This idea greatly impressed the Portuguese nobles{149} with
Prince Henry’s sagacity; they did not understand his schemes about
discovering a direct route to India, but they highly appreciated the
introduction of cheap forced labour. The commencement of the slave trade
greatly favoured the progress of the Portuguese navigators; they no
longer came home empty-handed, and exploring became a profitable as well
as an adventurous business. In 1444 Lançarote, with a fleet of eight
ships, went upon a slave-taking expedition, and brought home two hundred
captives, who were set to work on the domains of the Order of Christ in
the Algarves, and in 1445 the same captain sailed with a fleet of
fourteen ships from Lagos and brought home a still larger body of
unfortunate slaves. From this time forth the tracks made by the
explorers were followed closely by the slave-dealers. Large profits were
made in the trade, which had its centre at Lagos, and by the labour of
the captives the great estates of southern Portugal were speedily
brought under cultivation. The employment of slave labour was to have
serious consequences in the near future; but at this period, during the
life of Dom Henry, it had not yet begun to drive the poorer class of the
Portuguese people out of work in the fields, and into more precarious
modes of earning a livelihood.
It is not necessary to do more than notice the commencement of the slave
trade here; it is far more important to trace the progress of the
explorers.[10] In{150} 1445 Nuno Tristão sailed as far as the Senegal river,
and in the same year, Diniz Dias, his most daring rival, discovered
Guinea, and first saw the really black negroes. This advance, as a
glance at the map will show, meant much; the Portuguese explorers had
now thoroughly learnt how to find their way round the inhospitable
shoulder of North-west Africa; Cape Bojador and Cabo Branco had no
terrors for them, and their hopes of reaching India were excited by
finding that the coast trended abruptly to the east. The country, too,
was very different to that which they had toiled around so slowly; the
fertile land of Guinea with its powerful negroes, its spices and ivory,
and its prospect of gold, gave them encouragement, and on their return,
the acute merchants of Lisbon were not long in opening up a trade with
the newly-discovered country. Unfortunately the slave trade accompanied
the ventures of the Lisbon merchants, and the white men, instead of
making friends with the blacks, did not hesitate to seize them and to
sell them into slavery. The Church made no effort to restrain this
traffic; the blacks were heathen, and so it was to their advantage to be
brought to a Christian land to work, and perhaps to be converted.
The next two years were marked by the greatest activity. In 1446 Diniz
Diaz reached Cape Verde, which he called by that name from its green
appearance; and in the same year, Nuno Tristam was killed in a chase
after slaves, and Alvaro Fernandes, the nephew of João Gonçalves Zarco,
who had discovered Madeira, starting from that island, went one hundred{151}
leagues further than Cape Verde, and left João Fernandes at his own
request among the negroes. It is a strange commentary upon the death of
Nuno Tristão, that João Fernandes was able to remain among the negroes
for seven months in safety, learning their language and studying their
customs. It shows that there was no deep-rooted antipathy between the
whites and the blacks, and that the latter only attacked the Christians,
when they showed themselves enemies, and tried to rob them of their
liberty. João Fernandes was taken off in safety by Antam Gonçalves, in
the year 1447, and testified to Prince Henry that the blacks, if
heathen, were not monsters, but people of peaceful and affectionate
dispositions.
This activity was followed by another pause. Dom Henry was deeply
affected by the overthrow of his brother Dom Pedro; and his nephew,
Affonso V., failed to give him the moral and material support he had
formerly received. It is indeed a blot upon the reputation of “the
Navigator” that he made no greater effort to assist the great regent,
and that he was not by his side at Alfarrobeira. The next decade is
marked only in the history of maritime exploration by the discoveries of
Luigi Cadamosto, a Venetian, who had entered the service of Dom Henry,
and who had become his right hand both as a cartographer and an
explorer. On the voyages of Cadamosto there has been much controversy.
Some writers, resting upon certain notes of his, assert that he
discovered the Gambia as early as 1445, and the Cape Verde Islands in
1446; but modern inquirers believe{153}{152} that he greatly antedated his
discoveries in order to enhance his own glory. It is now generally
believed that in his famous voyage in 1455 and 1456 he managed to get
past the Senegal, and discovered the Gambia, and that the Cape Verde
Islands were discovered in 1460 by Diogo Gomes. The tale that Cadamosto
went as far as the Rio Grande is quite discredited, and seems in itself,
apart from the evidence, to be most improbable.
STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY.
(From Major’s “Prince Henry the Navigator.”)
The period of the discoveries made under the direction and inspiration
of Prince Henry “the Navigator” was then at an end, for he died at Sagre
on November 13, 1460. What he had done appears better from a study of
the map then in any number of words. He had not discovered a direct sea
route to India, but he had paved the way for it, and it was quite
certain that, if it existed, the gallant captains trained by him would
find the route in time. His services are beyond dispute, and though he
left no successor to carry on the work, he had given it such an impulse,
that it remained only for the sailors themselves to complete it. He was
never married, but was succeeded as Duke of Viseu, Lord of Beja and
Madeira, and Grand Master of the Order of Christ, by his nephew, Dom
Ferdinand, the second son of King Edward, and brother of Affonso V.,
whom he had adopted. This prince had also become Grand Master of the
Order of Santiago by his marriage with his first cousin, Donna Leonor,
daughter of Dom John, the fourth son of John “the Great,” by whom he was
father of Dom Manoel, or Emmanuel, who reigned under the title of
Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” and{154} was to reap the fruits of the discoveries
of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral.
The death of Prince Henry did much to check maritime exploration for
exploration’s sake, and for the purpose of discovering the direct route
to India; but the slave trade and the general trade with the Guinea
Coast were growing into importance, and the results of the labours of
the early Portuguese navigators were not forgotten. Affonso V. was more
bent on his Moorish expeditions and his schemes upon the crown of
Castile, than upon maritime discoveries; but, nevertheless, something of
importance was done during his reign in strengthening the hold of the
Portuguese upon the part of the African coast already known, and in
making their topographical information more exact. What Affonso did was
done rather to improve trade or protect it for the benefit of his own
exchequer than for love of exploration. It was for these reasons that he
built a fort on the island of Arguin, near Cabo Branco, which became the
depôt for the trade with Guinea, and eventually he granted the monopoly
of the trade with the African coast to Fernan Gomes for five hundred
crusados a year. This enterprising merchant employed able captains, of
whom the chief were João de Santarem, Pedro Escobar, and Lopo Gonçalves,
who worked their way further along the coast; and in 1471, in which year
Fernando Po discovered the islands of St. Thomas, Fernando Bom and Anno
Bom, they crossed the equator, and explored as far as Cape St.
Catherine.
TOMB OF PRINCE HENRY.
(From Major’s “Prince Henry the Navigator.”)
John II., the successor of Affonso V., set the seal{156}{155} upon Prince
Henry’s labours. He it was who built the fort of Elmina, and took the
title of Lord of Guinea; and it was in his reign that Diogo Cão or Cam
discovered the Congo in 1484, and Bartholomeu Diaz reached Algoa Bay in
1486, and doubled the cape, which he called Cabo Tormentoso, or Stormy
Cape, from the winds he met there, but which his sovereign, presaging
from this fortunate voyage the future glory of his country, called the
Cape of Good Hope. John II., like Prince Henry, was fated not to see the
fulfilment of his dearest hopes, and it was not until the fifteenth
century was within three years of its close that Vasco da Gama made his
way from Lisbon to Calicut.
While, in political life and commercial prosperity, the people of
Portugal had been at home becoming more civilized, more self-controlled,
and more wealthy during the fifteenth century, its sailors had been
growing more daring and enterprising. In the sixteenth century the
Portuguese were to have their reward. Lisbon was to take the place of
Venice as the depôt for all the products of the East; the trade of
Persia, India, China, Japan, and the Spice Islands, was to fall into
their hands; they were to produce great captains and writers, and were
to become the wealthiest nation in Europe. But that same sixteenth
century was to see the Portuguese power sink, and the independence, won
by Affonso Henriques and maintained by John “the Great,” vanish away; it
was to see Portugal, which had been the greatest nation of its time,
decline in its fame, and become a mere province of Spain. Hand in hand
with increased{157} wealth came corruption and depopulation, and within a
single century after the epoch-making voyage of Vasco da Gama, the
Portuguese people, tamed by the Inquisition, were to show no sign of
their former hardihood. This is the lesson that the Story of Portugal in
the sixteenth century teaches, that the greatness of a nation depends
not upon its wealth and commercial prosperity, but upon the thews and
sinews and the stout hearts of its people.
{158}
VIII.
THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL.
JOHN II., surnamed “the Perfect,” the only son of Affonso V., succeeded
his father as King of Portugal in 1481, and his short reign was marked
by events of the utmost importance at home, as well as by the great
discoveries of Diogo Cam and Bartholomeu Diaz. He had shown himself a
gallant soldier in his father’s last African expedition, when he was
knighted, and at the battle of Toro, and also a capable ruler, as
regent, during the absence of Affonso V. in France, and during that
king’s frequent periods of abdication. He saw the folly of his father in
wasting his strength in African expeditions, and in fruitless wars with
Castile, and he therefore recurred to the wise policy of his
great-grandfather, John “the Great,” in avoiding all interference with
Spanish affairs, and maintaining a close alliance with England. He also,
as has already been said, adopted enthusiastically all the schemes of
Prince Henry “the Navigator,” and laboured for the discovery of a route
to India by sea. He possessed all the hereditary aptitude of the princes
of the house of Aviz for{159} literature, and fostered the spirit of the
Renaissance in Portugal in the study of the classical languages, the
advancement of science, and the encouragement of art. He was a
broad-minded, tolerant man, with ideas far in advance of his age in many
respects, and possessing at once an inflexible will and remarkable
sweetness of disposition.
But John II. was more than all this; he was a politician and a statesman
of the first rank, and openly professed himself a disciple of
Machiavelli and a believer in the theory of absolute government. He
imitated Louis XI. of France, just as one of his predecessors, Sancho
II., had imitated Louis IX., and in his policy and in his manner of
carrying it out, he showed himself an apt pupil of his wily master. The
first great task he set himself, in imitation of that monarch, was to
break the power of the feudal nobility of Portugal. In doing this he
relied, and with justice, upon the assistance of the mass of the people,
who had learned during the last reign to detest and fear the almost
unlimited power of the nobles.
The origin of the enormous estates held by the Portuguese nobility has
already been pointed out, and the attempt made by King Edward to check
accumulations by the “Lei Mental” has also been mentioned; but this
regulation had had but little effect, owing to the profuse prodigality
of Affonso V. This monarch had granted away nearly the whole patrimony
of the crown; and John II. said with justice that his father had left
him “only the royal high roads of Portugal.” This liberality had kept
Affonso{160} poor in spite of the increasing wealth of his people and his
extravagance had been such, that he had been formally rebuked by a
Cortes, held at Guarda in 1465, and had been obliged to promise
amendment. Under the influence of this headstrong monarch and his
favourites the evils, inherent in the feudal system, had increased
alarmingly; crimes in country districts were only punished by fines, and
every means which rapacity could suggest to wring money out of an
impoverished tenantry were resorted to, while the wealth of the great
landlords had been increased by the improvement in the cultivation of
their lands due to the large importation of slaves. John II. determined
to crush the powerful and turbulent feudal nobility, and to draw back
some of its wealth into the royal treasury, and for this purpose he
summoned a great Cortes to meet at Evora in 1481, the year of his
accession. In this Cortes he proposed that a “inquiracão geral” should
be held into all titles to landed property, and that the royal
corregidors should alone be empowered to dispense and execute criminal
justice throughout the country. Both measures were agreed to, but the
nobles determined to resist the examination into their titles, and the
loss of the lucrative privilege of dispensing criminal justice, and they
combined to oppose the king, under the leadership of the Duke of
Braganza.
Ferdinand, Duke of Braganza, was the wealthiest and most powerful
nobleman, not only in Portugal, but in the whole peninsula. He was the
grandson of Affonso, Count of Barcellos, the illegitimate son of John
“the Great,” who had been created Duke of{161} Braganza by Affonso V., and
he had inherited the vast possessions of his grandfather and of his
grandmother, the daughter of the Holy Constable. These possessions had
been increased by the lavishness of Affonso V., who had showered favours
on the first and second Dukes of Braganza. Ferdinand possessed fifty
cities, towns, and castles, and nearly one-third of the land of the
kingdom; he was patron of one hundred and sixty canonries and religious
benefices; he maintained a royal household, and bore the titles of Duke
of Braganza and Guimaraens, Marquis of Villa Viçosa, Count of Barcellos,
Ourem, Arrayolos and Neiva, and Lord of Montalegre, Monporto, and
Penafiel. His brothers were nearly as powerful as himself. The eldest,
João, was Marquis of Monte Mor, and Constable of the kingdom; the
second, Affonso, was Count of Faro; and the youngest, Alvaro, held the
important office of Chancellor. In the reign of Affonso V. this great
nobleman had quarrelled fiercely with John II., then heir apparent, but
he believed he had secured his safety by marrying a sister of the future
queen, for both Prince John and himself married daughters of Ferdinand,
Duke of Viseu and Beja, the brother of Affonso V., and inheritor of the
wealth of Prince Henry “the Navigator.” The Duke of Braganza took the
lead in opposing the king’s decrees passed in the Cortes of Evora, and
John II. was glad of it, not only because he coveted the wealth and
lands of the Braganza family, which dimmed the splendour of the Crown,
and on account of their former quarrels in the late king’s lifetime, but
also because he remembered that{162} he was, through his mother, the
grandson of the great regent, Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, who had been
defeated and slain at Alfarrobeira by this very Duke of Braganza and his
father. For all these reasons John II. decided to strike a sudden and
decisive blow, which should at once re-establish the power of the Crown
and paralyze the feudal nobility with terror, and he therefore had the
Duke of Braganza arrested, and executed, after a very short trial, at
Evora, on June 22, 1483.
The nobles, however, were not yet defeated, and they continued to
intrigue against the king’s authority under the leadership of a yet
nearer relation of his own, Diogo, Duke of Viseu and Beja, the eldest
son of Dom Ferdinand, and grandson of King Edward, and the
brother-in-law alike of the king and of the executed Duke of Braganza.
But John II. was not dismayed: imitating Louis XI. of France, he
determined not to spare his own relations, and on August 23, 1484, he
stabbed the Duke of Viseu with his own hand in his palace at Setubal.
This murder he followed up with decision: he had the Bishop of Evora,
one of his father’s favourites, thrown down a well; and he executed,
with or without trial, about eighty of the leading noblemen of the
country. By these means John II. broke the power of the feudal nobility
for ever, and as happened in France under Louis XI., and in England
under Henry VII., the fall of the nobility was followed by the
absolutism of the monarch. Now that the nobles had lost their power, and
the Crown had become wealthy by the confiscation of their property, John
II. needed the{163} support of the people, as represented in the Cortes, no
longer, and he became a despot, though a benevolent one. But the weight
of this despotism was not yet felt, for John II. possessed all the
political ability of his grandfathers. He tried to find means for
encouraging his nobility, now that they were frightened out of treason,
to enter into the career of maritime exploration, which had been opened
by Prince Henry, while at home he won the love of his people by
reorganizing the government of the kingdom, and proved so good an
administrator that the Portuguese gave him the title of “the Perfect
King.”
It has been said that in his foreign policy John II. followed in the
course set before him by John the Great. With the great monarchs then
ruling in Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, he
consistently remained on friendly terms, and in 1490 his only legitimate
son, Affonso, was married to Isabella, eldest daughter of these
sovereigns. The death of this son in the following year, without leaving
children, was a terrible blow to him, but he nevertheless maintained his
friendship with Ferdinand and Isabella, and in 1494 concluded the Treaty
of Tordesillas with them. By this treaty, which was confirmed by a Bull,
issued by Pope Alexander VI., the limit of the future possessions of the
Spaniards and Portuguese in the regions explored and discovered by their
mariners was 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, and it was agreed that the
Spaniards were to have full right to all lands discovered to the west of
this line, and the Portuguese to all to the{164} south and east. What a
curious commentary this treaty forms on that of Cella Nova, concluded
three hundred years before between Affonso Henriques of Portugal and
Ferdinand of Leon, by which these two monarchs agreed to take the course
of the Guadiana as the line to separate their future conquests from the
Moors. Both nations had now developed; the energies of both, heightened
by the long struggle with the Mohammedans, sought for fresh fields, and
expanding far beyond the boundaries of Europe, were to prove themselves,
in the one case in Mexico and Peru, and in the other in India and the
countries of the East.
In the other cardinal point of the policy of John “the Great,” the
maintenance of a close alliance with England, John II. carefully
followed the example of the founder of the house of Aviz. Affonso V. had
not neglected this important tradition, and had even promised his
sister, Donna Catherine, to Edward IV., in 1461, a marriage only
frustrated by the death of the princess in 1463; and the English monarch
had solemnly ratified the Treaty of Windsor in 1471, and again after the
battle of Barnet in 1472, and he had also included the name of the King
of Portugal, as an ally of England, in his treaty with Louis XI. of
France, in 1475. John II. drew the bonds of friendship still closer, and
sent important embassies to the three kings of England, who ruled in
quick succession in this country. In 1482 Edward IV. ratified the Treaty
of Windsor in the presence of the ambassadors of John II., and
recognized his new title of “Lord of Guinea,” and in 1484 Richard III.
did the same. In 1485 the King of Portugal proposed in a Cortes{165} held at
Alçobaça, that his only sister Joanna should be given in marriage to
Richard III., but the princess, who was famed for her piety and wished
to become a nun, fortunately for herself, refused the alliance, as she
afterwards did the hand of Charles VIII. of France. Henry VII. bore no
enmity towards John II. on account of his friendship with Richard III.,
but, on the contrary, showed every disposition to assist him in his
struggle with his nobility, and in 1488 went so far as to arrest the
Count of Pennamacor, one of the insurgent Portuguese noblemen who had
escaped to England, and to imprison him in the Tower. It was in this
year also that the last treaty of commerce between England and Portugal,
before the famous Methuen treaty in 1703, was concluded at Lisbon by
Richard Nanfran and Thomas Savage, who had been sent for that purpose,
and to invest John II. as a Knight of the Garter.
CHART OF GOA. (From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 248.)
But it was not only on account of his suppression of the power of the
feudal nobility, and of his wise peace policy, that John “the Perfect”
was beloved by his people, it was also because he showed himself a
worthy successor of Prince Henry “the Navigator,” in promoting
exploration, and devoted his best energies to discovering a direct route
to India. The two famous voyages of Diogo Cam and Bartholomeu Diaz,
which had resulted in the discovery of the Congo and of the Cape of Good
Hope, have been mentioned, but it was rather in other directions that
the originality of mind which distinguished John II. showed itself. He
was the first European monarch who thought that if it might be possible
to reach{167}{166} India by sea by sailing round the continent of Africa, it
might also be possible to find a road to “Cathay” by sailing round the
continent of Europe to the north-east. On this mission he despatched
Martim Lopes, who sailed past the North Cape into regions hitherto
unexplored, and discovered the great island to the north of Russia,
which still bears the name he gave it of Nova Zembla. John II. also had
ideas of striking out new routes to India by land, or at least of
exploring the land routes in order to correct prevalent geographical
mistakes. With these ideas he sent forth the two first European
explorers of the interior of Africa, Pedro de Evora and Gonçalo Annes,
who managed to get as far as Timbuctoo. Still more important were the
missions which he sent overland to India, and in search of that mythical
Christian potentate, Prester John. The two travellers he despatched were
João Peres de Covilhão and Affonso de Payva. The former of these
enterprising men made his way safely to India by following the regular
trade route and accompanying the caravans. He visited both Goa and
Calicut, and though he was refused a passage to the Cape, he managed to
find his way back to Arabia, and eventually to Abyssinia, where he
became the chief adviser and almost prime minister of the king, at whose
capital he died. The other traveller, Affonso de Payva, went direct to
Abyssinia, where the mythical Prester John was supposed to reign, and
also died there.
VASCO DA GAMA. (From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 18.)
The energies of John II. were so wholly absorbed in these expeditions to
the East, and he felt so certain that he was in the right direction in
try{169}{168}ing to reach India by eastern routes, that he made the great
mistake in 1493 of dismissing Christopher Columbus from his court as a
visionary. He listened to all the arguments of the great discoverer with
patience, but he did not agree with his conclusions that it was possible
to reach India by sailing westwards across the Atlantic, and he
therefore lost the opportunity of immortalizing his name and reign by a
greater discovery than that of Vasco da Gama, the discovery of the vast
continent of America. In other departments his energies found full
scope. He greatly improved the art of ship-building, and encouraged the
immigration of skilled shipwrights from England and Denmark; he did much
to promote the improvement of fire-arms, and established a cannon
foundry and a corps of artillery, of which he made Diogo de Azambuja the
first Inspector-General; and, above all, he patronized literature, and
encouraged Ruy de Pina, the greatest of all the Portuguese chroniclers.
His court abounded in great men, the founders of great families and the
fathers of the coming generation of heroes, among whom may be noted,
besides his navigators, Diogo Cam, Bartholomeu Diaz, and Lopo Infante,
and his famous travellers just mentioned, his Lord High Admirals, Pedro
de Alboquerque and Lopo Vaz de Azevedo; his Lord Stewards, Diogo Soares
de Albergaria, Pedro de Noronha, and João de Menezes; his Master of the
Horse, Affonso de Alboquerque; his Secretary-General Ruy Galvão; and his
Chancellor, the acute lawyer and most strenuous supporter of the
despotic power of the king, Ruy de Graa.{170}
Yet the reign of John “the Perfect,” full as it was of great events, and
great as is its importance in the history of Portugal, was but
comparatively short. His happiness was clouded by the sad death of his
only son, Dom Affonso, in 1491, the year after he had married the
Infanta Isabella, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who then
ruled in Spain, and he felt with repugnance that his successor on the
throne must be Manoel, or Emmanuel, Duke of Beja, the brother of the
murdered Duke of Viseu, a man in whom he could see no fit qualities for
carrying on his own great schemes and projects. To oust him John II.
thought of legitimatizing his illegitimate son by Anna de Mendonça, Dom
Jorge, or George, whom he had made Grand Master of the Orders of
Santiago and Aviz, but the reflection that on his death the country he
loved so well would then be torn by civil war restrained him, and he did
not interfere with the law of succession. During the last days of his
life the “Perfect King” was busily engaged in fitting out the fleet
which, under Vasco da Gama, was to realize his most cherished dream, and
he was still in the ripe strength of manhood when he died at Alvor, in
the province of the Algarves, on October 25, 1495.
The quarter of a century during which the successor of John II.,
Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” reigned, is the great heroic period of
Portuguese history, and during it the great deeds, which make the Story
of Portugal an important part of the history of Europe and of the world,
were done. Discoveries and daring feats of arms distinguished nearly
every year of this truly fortunate reign, and the fame of the great{171}
Portuguese generals, captains, and travellers is rivalled only by that
of its poets and men of letters. As the progress of the Portuguese in
the East and West, and their great literary development, will be
examined in three different chapters, it will here be possible only to
narrate the events of Emmanuel’s reign in Portugal, and to show how, at
the period of the greatest glory of the country, the age of its rapid
decline was at hand. The causes of that decline were manifold, and are
generally placed in the reign of Emmanuel’s successor, but the seed of
each appeared in the reign of the “fortunate” monarch himself.
Emmanuel himself contributed but little to the blaze of glory which
illustrates his reign. He despatched great fleets and armies to distant
parts of the world, and received the wealth their discoveries and
exertions brought into his treasury with equanimity; but he had only one
fixed idea, the old wild dream which had brought disaster upon Ferdinand
“the Handsome” and Affonso V., the longing to sit upon the throne of
Spain and to unite the kingdoms of the peninsula under his sovereignty.
To gain this end he proposed to marry the Infanta Isabella, the eldest
daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, and
widow of the unfortunate Affonso, the only son of John II., and in order
to be recognized as heir to the kingdoms of Spain, he promised to expel
the Jews and unbaptized Moors from Portugal.
No class had done more to promote the height of commercial prosperity to
which Portugal had attained than the Portuguese Jews. In another volume
of this{172} Series[11] Mr. Lane-Poole says: “Wherever the arms of the
Saracens penetrated, there we shall always find the Jews in close
pursuit,” and in no part of the peninsula had they collected in greater
numbers than in the great cities of Portugal, especially in Lisbon,
Santarem, and Evora. These Jews belonged for the most part to the
Sephardim, and were in every intellectual quality superior to the
Ashkenazim, or German and Polish Jews; protected by the Moors, they had
grown in wealth and power, and when they came under the rule of Affonso
Henriques, that great monarch extended the same tolerance towards them.
His successors followed his example, and under monarchs with commercial
aspirations such as Diniz and John “the Great,” the Jews had been more
than protected, they had been favoured. While persecuted in other
countries, they had met with consistent protection in Portugal, and they
acknowledged the generous treatment which they received by extending the
commerce of their adopted country. The Portuguese Jews possessed a high
reputation all over Europe for wealth, integrity, and commercial
acuteness, and had business agencies and banks in every land, which
contributed to the wealth of the country, which had been for centuries
their home. Such was the wealthy and industrious class of citizens,
which Emmanuel consented to banish from his dominions, partly to please
the bigotry of Ferdinand and Isabella, whom he hoped to succeed, and
partly in order to absorb, as the Portuguese crown eventually did, the
whole of the coming trade with the East.{173} These unfortunate families
were obliged to leave the country, which had been their fatherland, and
the cities, which had been their homes, from generation to generation,
with but six months in which to prepare for banishment; they were
obliged to dispose of their flourishing businesses at a loss, and to
start anew in the world to find new occupations and new homes. It is
hardly a matter for wonder, that many Jews preferred to be baptized and
to become half-hearted Christians rather than expatriate themselves, but
these “Novaes Christiãos” had, as will be seen, no reason to rejoice a
few years later at their apostasy. With the Jews were banished also many
unbaptized Mohammedans, the especial enemies of Ferdinand “the
Catholic.” This class had become numerous since the taking of Granada in
1492, when many of them fled from Spain into Portugal, and had been
kindly received by John II. It is worthy of notice that the Most
Catholic monarchs, who persuaded Emmanuel to take such severe steps
against Jews and Mohammedans, who were ready to earn an honest
livelihood as free men, made no protest against the thousands of negro
slaves, who were being yearly imported into Portugal, and left to their
belief in superstitions far more degrading than the religions either of
Jews or Moslems.
For this decree of banishment passed against law-abiding Portuguese
citizens, Emmanuel had his reward, for he was married to the Infanta
Isabella in 1497. But the curse of the Jews followed him, and he never
sat upon the throne of Spain. Whilst the royal bride and bridegroom were
passing through the{174} cities of Castile in a state progress as heirs to
the thrones of Spain, Queen Isabella fell ill, and died at Toledo on
August 24, 1498. She left an infant son, Dom Miguel, at whose birth she
had died, but he did not survive to realize the hopes of his father, and
died in 1500. Even these two deaths did not put an end to Emmanuel’s
schemes, and in the same year 1500, he married the Donna Maria of
Castile, the sister of his deceased wife. This marriage was not so
likely to promote his success as the first; for whereas the Infanta
Isabella was the eldest daughter of Ferdinand and his queen, the Infanta
Maria was but the third daughter, and the daughter between them, the
Infanta Joanna, had a son who, as the legitimate heir of his
grandparents, was to succeed to thrones of Spain and eventually become
the Emperor Charles V. By his second wife, Emmanuel had no less than six
sons, but what has been called the “curse of the Jews” pursued them, and
his descendants soon failed in the direct line. Even to the last, the
same wild fancy possessed him, and in 1518, the year after his second
wife’s death, he married again, and this time also with a view of
succeeding Charles V., for he married his own niece, the sister of the
Emperor. She survived him, and afterwards married Francis I. of France.
From these restless longings after the neighbouring thrones, and the
ignoble schemes of the Portuguese monarch, it is a relief to turn to the
actions of the Portuguese heroes. Their deeds will be related
separately, but after the barren intrigues of Emmanuel, it will be as
well to mention chronologically {175}the chief discoveries of his captains.
In 1497, Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and reached India
by sea; in 1500 Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil, and Gaspar
Corte-Real, Labrador; in 1501 João da Nova Castella discovered the
islands of St. Helena and Ascension; and in that year and in 1503
Amerigo Vespucci first visited the Rio Plata and Paraguay; in 1506
Tristão da Cunha discovered the island which bears his name; and Ruy
Pereira Coutinho explored Madagascar and the Mauritius; in 1507 Lourenço
de Almeida touched at the Maldive Islands; in 1509 Diogo Lopes de
Sequeira occupied Malacca and explored the island of Sumatra; in 1512
Francisco Serrão discovered the Moluccas; in 1513 Pedro de Mascarenhas
first touched at the Île de Bourbon or Réunion; in 1516 Duarte Coelho
worked his way up the coast of Cochin China and explored Siam; in 1517
Fernão Peres de Andrade established himself at Canton, and the same
explorer made his way to Pekin in 1521; and in 1520 Magalhães
(Magellan), a Portuguese sailor, though in the Spanish service, passed
through the Straits which bear his name and led the way into the Pacific
Ocean.
These exploits make up a list of achievements of which any country might
be proud; the bare catalogue of them, without any epithets, justifies
the description given of the reign of Emmanuel “the Fortunate” as the
heroic age of Portuguese history. It has been shown that the king
contributed little to this greatness, and the mistaken direction of his
foreign policy has been noticed. It now remains to be seen how the seeds
of rapid decline were sown. Emmanuel was far from being a bad{176} man,
though he does not show to advantage, when compared with such monarchs
as John “the Great” and John “the Perfect;” he was a moral and pious
man,—too pious as his expulsion of the Jews clearly demonstrates; he
can hardly be blamed for his extravagance and taste for luxury, when the
enormous wealth of the Portuguese Crown is considered; and he spent much
of this wealth on art and architecture, as the construction of the
magnificent palace of Belem, near Lisbon, testifies to this day. This
superb building may have many faults to the eye of the architectural
expert, but to the ordinary mind it seems almost the most superb
structure in the world. With regard to internal administration, Emmanuel
did not do much harm; the wheels of government had been put into such
perfect order by John II. that the machine of administration worked well
without interference. But John II. had made one great mistake, the
fruits of which appeared in the reign of Emmanuel and his successor; he
had changed the monarchy of Portugal from being patriotic and dependent
on the good will of the people into an absolute monarchy, in which the
king’s will was everything. The overthrow of the nobility and the wealth
of the Crown had made the king independent of the support of his people,
as represented in the Cortes. The nobility, deprived of their power at
home, had thrown themselves with ardour into the career of Eastern
discovery and conquest, and nearly all the great heroes of the period
belonged to noble families. Emmanuel recognized the greatness of these
men, and showered honours upon them; but in{177} the next generation, the
fatal result of despotism became evident, and the nobility, instead of
thinking of their country, and looking to their fellow citizens’
approbation for their reward, looked rather to the king, and made
loyalty to a man and not to their country their guiding principle. This
attachment to the king was encouraged by the wealth of the Crown, which
enabled the sovereign to bestow large pensions and pay enormous
salaries, and the Portuguese nobility began to become a nobility of
courtiers instead of a nobility of patriots. This extraordinary wealth
of the Crown was due to its absorption of the trade with India, for the
wealth of the East was conveyed to Lisbon on royal ships, and fetched
thence by enterprising traders of other nations. It was then that the
mistake of Emmanuel in banishing the Jews became more and more obvious,
for Portugal only brought the products of Asia to Europe, but did not
distribute them throughout Europe. It was in these respects that the
seeds of decline were sown, in the loss of public spirit, and the
absorption by the Crown of the whole wealth won by the valour of the
people. Yet these steps towards decline were not at first visible to the
eyes either of foreign nations or of the people themselves. The glory of
Portugal was spread abroad, and the wealth of its monarch and his
splendour became proverbial. The great literary movement, which in this
reign is represented by Gil Vicente, Ayres Barbosa, Garcia de Resende,
and Bernardim Ribeiro, will be discussed in another chapter, but it must
be noted here in regard to Emmanuel, that, though he did banish the
Jews, he was {178}broad-minded enough to be a patron of literature and that
he was in this respect the superior of the fanatical bigot who succeeded
him.
Emmanuel, as he increased in wealth, bestowed great appanages on his
sons, while his daughters were sought in marriage by the greatest
princes in Christendom. His eldest son Dom John married Catherine of
Austria, sister of Charles V. Of his other sons, three—Dom Luis, Dom
Ferdinand, and Dom Edward—were created respectively dukes of Beja,
Guarda, and Guimaraens, while the other two took holy orders and became
cardinals. Of his two surviving daughters, the elder, Donna Isabel,
married the Emperor Charles V., and the younger, Donna Beatrice, the
divinity to whom the poet Bernardim Ribeiro addressed his songs, married
Charles III., Duke of Savoy. With such a family of sons it did not seem
likely that in a few short years the male line of the house of Aviz
would become extinct, and it was with a feeling of pride in his wealth
and with assured confidence in the perpetuation of his line that
Emmanuel “the Fortunate” died in his beautiful palace at Belem, on
December 12, 1521.
The reign of John III. is that in which the rapid decline of Portugal is
most perceptible. All the germs of decay which had appeared in the reign
of Emmanuel, developed during the reign of his son, by the end of which,
though the sovereign of Portugal was the richest in Europe, not
excepting the Emperor himself, the greatness of the country was
obviously disappearing. The natural growth of this decline was assisted
by the fanaticism of John III., who was a{179} bigot of the most pronounced
type, and who powerfully aided the extinction of the greatness of the
country by his introduction of the Inquisition. Though personally a
pious and estimable man, he was absolutely unable to take any steps to
check the downfall of his country’s greatness, and considered the
greatest fame of his reign would be due to the establishment of the
Inquisition and the introduction of the Jesuits. The greatest credit
that can be given to him is that he kept his country out of all European
complications, a task made comparatively easy by his close alliance with
the greatest monarch in Europe, the Emperor Charles V. This alliance was
sealed by three marriages; for King John was married to the Infanta
Catherine, the sister of Charles V., his only son Dom John was married
to the Infanta Joanna, daughter of Charles V., and his only daughter,
Donna Maria, was the first wife of Philip, prince of the Asturias, the
eldest son of Charles V., and afterwards King Philip II. These marriages
knitted the bonds of alliance closely between the reigning houses of
Spain and Portugal, and a powerful Portuguese fleet under the king’s
brother, Dom Luis, Duke of Beja, assisted in the Spanish expedition
against Tunis in 1535. Yet fighting with the Moors seemed to have lost
its charm for the Portuguese people, for during the next ten years, all
the chief towns held by Portugal in northern Africa, Azamor, Cafim, Cabo
do Sul, and even Arzila and Alcacer Seguier, the captures of Affonso
“the African,” were abandoned, in order that the whole strength of the
country might be concentrated on its Indian and Brazilian possessions.{180}
This quiet abandonment of all the north African possessions, except
Ceuta and Mazagon, affords a yet further proof of the change in the
character of the Portuguese nobility and their sovereign. They no longer
desired to fight against the old hereditary enemy of the Christian
religion, as crusaders; John III. was no “Ré Cavalleiro” like Affonso
V., but preferred stamping out heresy at home to fighting infidels
abroad; and king and nobles alike agreed that it was better to expend
their power in the wealthy Indies than in barren Africa. The nobles
became more and more dependent on the Crown, and spent all their
energies in intriguing for “moradias” or pensions from the Court, and
for rich governments abroad. The absolutism of the king and the
employment of crowds of sycophant courtiers spread corruption into every
department of government, and the officials of all sorts, both in
Portugal and India, hurried to make fortunes by every means, honest or
otherwise, in their power. “Personal worship of the king,” in the words
of an able Portuguese writer, “had eaten out patriotism,”[12] and though
such a man as Dom João de Castro may be cited as a specimen of the
great-hearted Portuguese nobleman of the finest type, most of the
nobility sank into Court lackeys or greedy fortune hunters, and even the
famous navigator, Fernão de Magalhães, deserted his country and entered
the service of Spain, because the pension he coveted was not conferred
upon him.{181} The Asiatic trade, it must be insisted upon, was the monopoly
of the Crown, and only indirectly profited the ordinary trading classes,
and in the hot pursuit of wealth, agriculture was neglected.
There was, however, a more serious cause for the decline of the power of
Portugal than the absolutism of the Crown, the want of patriotism of the
nobility, or even than the corruption of the officials, and that was the
rapid depopulation of the country. The Alemtejo and Algarves had never
been thoroughly peopled, for the devastations caused by the Moorish wars
could not be easily repaired; and, though the exertions of Diniz “the
Labourer” had made the Beira the garden of the whole Iberian peninsula,
the part of the kingdom to the south of the Tagus had remained either in
the hands of the military religious orders or split up into large feudal
estates. The great discoveries at the end of the fifteenth and the
beginning of the sixteenth centuries largely checked the natural
increase of population. Not only did the bulk of the young men gladly
volunteer to man the fleets and serve in the armies in India and the
East, but whole families emigrated to Madeira, and after 1530 to Brazil.
The Portuguese are essentially an adventurous nation, fond of travelling
and full of enterprise, and no difficulty was found in manning the great
Indian fleets and recruiting the armies of Alboquerque and his
successors. Of the thousands who flocked to Asia, but few ever returned.
The incidents of perpetual warfare, and the noxious climate, killed off
most, and of those who survived, many married native women and settled
down in{182} India. Even of the people who did remain in Portugal, few
remained in their native homesteads engaged in agriculture; most crowded
into Lisbon, where the necessities of the Eastern trade afforded work
for all. The capital trebled its population in eighty years, in spite of
its most unsanitary condition and the periodical pestilences which
ravaged it. The king, the nobles, and the military orders were, however,
quite undisturbed by this extensive emigration and rapid depopulation,
for their large estates were much more cheaply cultivated by African
slaves, who had been imported in such numbers that the Algarves was
almost entirely populated by them, and in Lisbon itself they
out-numbered the free men by the middle of the sixteenth century. In
this respect the condition of Portugal resembled that of Italy at the
time of the decline of the Roman Empire, as the wealth of Lisbon
resembled that of Imperial Rome, while the utter corruption and
oppression of the officials in the Indian settlements resembled only too
closely the peculation and corruption of the Roman proconsuls and
procurators.
While the Portuguese nation was exhibiting these signs of rapid
decadence, another factor of decline was added by the religious zeal of
John III., who, from the moment of his accession, had striven to
introduce the Inquisition into Portugal. The Church of Rome was not
likely to hinder his pious desire, but for several years the “novães
Christiãos” or neo-Christians, as the half-hearted converts made from
the Jews, on condition that they might remain in Portugal, were called,
managed to ward off the blow.{183} But the king’s earnest wish was gratified
at last, and in 1536 the tribunal of the Holy Office was established in
Portugal, with Diogo da Silva, Bishop of Ceuta, as first Grand
Inquisitor, who was soon succeeded by the king’s brother, the Cardinal
Dom Henry. The Inquisition quickly destroyed all that was left of the
old Portuguese spirit, and so effectually stamped out the revival of
Portuguese literature that, while, towards the close of the sixteenth
century, the rest of Europe was advancing in civilization under the
influence of the Renaissance, Portugal fell back, and her literature
became dumb. The establishment of the Inquisition was followed in 1540
by the introduction of the Jesuits, who speedily obtained control of the
national education, and carefully checked intellectual development. The
king received his reward from the Pope for these services to
Catholicism; he was permitted to unite the Grand Mastership of the
wealthy orders of Christ, Santiago, and Aviz, with the Crown, and to
found the new bishoprics of Leiria, Miranda, and Porto Alegre, in
Portugal, and the archbishopric of Goa, in India.
It must not be thought that the reign of John III. seemed to his
contemporaries the era of decline it certainly was; no king was richer,
no people more loyal, and no man more honoured. His reign, like that of
Emmanuel, is studded with great names and great events, and a casual
observer could not observe the seeds of decay. Besides João de Castro,
there lived then many great Indian heroes and warriors, such as Nuno da
Cunha, Antonio de Silveira, João de Mascarenhas, and Luis de Athaide; it
was during this{184} reign that Francisco Coutinho, Count of Redondo,
conquered Ceylon, and Fernão Mendes Pinto paid his famous visits to
Japan, and the present Portuguese settlement of Macao was founded. Still
greater are the literary glories of the reign of the supporter of the
Inquisition, for in it Camoens wrote the “Lusiads,” Ferreira wrote his
dramas, João de Barros his history, and Sà de Miranda his poems, all
works which do not seem to mark a declining country. In art, and
especially in architecture, the king showed no mean taste, and his
palace at Thomar and the great convent at Belem show that he was in this
respect a worthy successor of King Emmanuel, and that the Portuguese
workmen had attained to no small degree of skill in decorative work.
Yet in spite of these glories, the heroic age of Portugal was over, and
in little more than twenty years after John III.’s death, the country,
which had so long maintained its independence, was absorbed by Spain.
This was to be expected from the decline the causes of which have been
analysed, but the final catastrophe was hastened by the death of the
heir to the throne, Dom João, in 1554, which brought about on the death
of John III., in 1557, the accession to the throne of a child of three
years old, the ill-fated Dom Sebastian. Enough has been said of Portugal
during the heroic age of the Portuguese nation; it is now time to study
the deeds of the men, who made the age heroic by their valour and
daring.{185}
IX.
THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA AND THE EASTERN SEAS.
THERE is no subject that calls more loudly for an historian than the
history of the Portuguese in India during the sixteenth century. There
are Portuguese authorities in plenty, for, with a vivid perception of
the picturesque, many of the greatest writers of the golden age of
Portuguese literature devoted themselves to this fascinating subject.
João de Barros, the Portuguese Livy, and a contemporary of the great
Indian viceroys, wrote a history of the first half century of Portuguese
conquest in India in several volumes, full of interest and charm; Fernão
Lopes de Castanheda, Diogo do Couto, and Manoel de Faria e Sousa, all
worked in the same field, and the lives of the two greatest of the
Portuguese viceroys have full light thrown upon them in the Commentaries
of Affonso de Alboquerque,[13] published by his son, and the beautiful
Life of Dom João de Castro by Jacinto Freire de Andrade, which is a
model of a perfect biography. Nor have the leaders{186} of the revival of
the study of history neglected to treat this subject in a scientific
manner; many valuable monographs and reprints of precious documents have
seen the light within the last fifty years, and much material still
remains undigested and unarranged in the archives at the Torre del
Tombo. Yet this period, in spite of all the work which has been done
upon it, still remains without an historian, fitted by a thorough
knowledge, both of Indian history and of the state of civilization in
India at the period in question, to draw out the salient and interesting
points of the first direct contact between modern Europe and modern
Asia, between the East and the West.
Yet it is work which well deserves to be done. Prescott, the great
American historian, has shown the interest attaching to the first
conflict between Spanish chivalry and the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas
of Peru; but when will an historian arise to tell worthily the story of
the contact between the heroes of Portugal and the more civilized
inhabitants of Hindustan? Apart from the fascination of this side of the
subject, there remains the fact that for a century the intercourse
between Asia and Europe remained in the hands of the Portuguese. The
history of the Dutch and the English in the Eastern seas has its own
peculiar interest, but they did not find their way in that direction
until the nations of the East had been for a whole century in contact
with Europeans, and until their attitude had been greatly modified by
this contact. Besides, the Dutch and English both went to the East{187} as
traders, and not as conquerors, colonizers, and preachers as well. Far
different was the intention of the Portuguese. Regardless of the small
size and slender population of their fatherland, they dreamed of nothing
less than conquering the mighty empires of the East, and imposing
Christianity upon them, if need be, by the edge of their swords.
Grandiose as this intention was, and full of inconsequence as the idea
seems to modern eyes, which have seen with what difficulty England with
its teeming population has managed to maintain its hold upon India, even
while it has discouraged proselytism and protected native religions,
there is something noble in the confidence of the Portuguese warriors in
their God, and in their belief that through their means He would spread
Christianity throughout the East. For the ambitions of the Portuguese
were not confined to India; Portuguese adventurers actually established
themselves in power in parts of Arabia, in Burma, and in the district of
Chittagong at the head of the Bay of Bengal; Portuguese emissaries found
their way to Pekin and Japan, closely followed by the missionaries of
the Roman Church; and it was while on his way to convert the millions of
China to Christianity that St. Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the
Indies, gave up his life. And, lastly, it must be remembered at what
odds the Portuguese fought and tried to proselytize in Asia: at many
months’ voyage from their homes and base of operations; only able to
reach their destinations after sailing in feeble craft round the hardly
known, unexplored, and dangerous coast of Africa; deprived of the modern
knowledge alike of tides and winds,{188} and of the means to promote
existence in tropical climates; they arrived amidst the hostile millions
armed only with clumsy arquebuses and their swords; and yet with all
these drawbacks they were victorious in many hard-fought fights against
more powerful armies than their European successors in the East ever
met. Of course there are many blots upon this noble history, tales of
corruption and oppression, and of the preference of commercial
transactions which made fortunes to the harder régime of honesty and
uprightness; but for all that the history is one marked by achievements
of valour and adventurous daring, unmatched elsewhere in the history of
the world. No wonder that Portugal was exhausted by her efforts; the
only wonder is that her sons ever did one tithe of these glorious deeds,
or exerted themselves one-tenth as much as they did. This story of the
Portuguese in India cannot be treated adequately in a single chapter.
Only a résumé of the very briefest description can be given, but if it
inspires any reader to go, for instance, to the history of De Barros, he
will there find the record of many a deed which will justify these
remarks and excite both his interest and his admiration.
It was in the July of 1497 that the fleet of four ships, destined to
double the Cape of Good Hope and find its way direct to India, set sail
from Lisbon. King Emmanuel, who in carrying out this project and
despatching this squadron was only fulfilling the plan formed by John
II., selected for the command Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of his
household, and son of an experienced mariner, named Estevão da{189} Gama,
who had been the nominee of John II. for this post; and two able
captains, Paul da Gama, the brother of Vasco, and Nicolas Coelho,
volunteered to accompany him. The perils and dangers of this famous
voyage have been told in immortal stanzas by Camoens; it is enough here
to say that the Portuguese fleet safely rounded the Cape of Good Hope,
and began to work its way up the south-eastern coast of Africa. The
rulers of Mozambique and Mombassa showed no disposition to assist the
Portuguese admiral in his endeavour to find a pilot to guide him across
the Indian Ocean; on the contrary, they proved actively hostile, and the
false pilot, whom the chief of Mozambique had given him, under the
hostile influence, according to Camoens, of Bacchus, who was fearful
lest his fame as Victor Indicus should be surpassed, deserted the
fleet at Mombassa. However, Vasco da Gama pressed northwards, and at the
little town of Melinda, to the north of Zanzibar, he found a friendly
monarch, who gave him a skilful pilot. But the perils of the expedition
were not yet over; it was the wrong time of the year for crossing the
Indian Ocean, and it was only after encountering fearful storms that the
Portuguese heroes cast anchor off the city of Calicut on May 20, 1498,
after a voyage of nearly eleven months.
The India, which Vasco da Gama reached, was in a very different
condition to the India of the Great Moghuls, which came into relations
with the first Dutch and English adventurers. It contained no emperor,
exercising almost universal sway, but many independent kingdoms. “An
Afghán of the Lodí{190} dynasty was then on the throne of Delhi, and another
Afghán king was ruling over Bengal. Ahmadábád formed the seat of a
Muhammadan dynasty in Gujarát. The five independent Muhammadan kingdoms
of Ahmadnagar, Bijápur, Ellichpur, Golconda, and Bídar had partitioned
out the Deccan. But the Hindu Rājā of Vijayanagar still ruled as
paramount in the south, and was, perhaps, the most powerful monarch to
be found at that time in India, not excepting the Lodí dynasty at
Delhi.”[14] The ruler of the city at which Vasco da Gama first arrived
was a Hindu Rājā, who bore the title of Zamorin, a word derived,
according to some writers, from the tradition that the first limits of
the settlement were decided by the distance the crowing of a cock could
be heard from the summit of the Tali Temple. But though himself a Hindu,
the most important subjects of the Zamorin were the fanatical Moplas,
the descendants of some Arab and Mohammedan settlers on the Malabar
coast. These men had greatly extended the dominions of the Zamorins of
Calicut and were the wealthiest inhabitants of the seaboard, for they
held the trade of the Malabar coast with Aden, and therefore with the
Red Sea, Egypt, and Europe in their hands. It is not to be wondered at
therefore, that, though the Hindu Zamorin received the Portuguese
navigator with courtesy, the Moplas showed the bitterest opposition{191} to
him, and discouraged the idea of a direct trade with Europe, which would
bring about their own ruin. This opposition prevented Vasco da Gama from
carrying out his intention of leaving some settlers to form a trade
establishment at Calicut, and after cruising about along the Malabar
coast he commenced his voyage back to Europe.
The voyage home was no less perilous than the voyage out, and it was not
until the 29th of August, 1499, that Vasco da Gama cast anchor in the
port of Lisbon, bringing back with him but fifty-five out of the 148
companions who had started with him on his adventurous journey. The
pious navigator at once went up to the church of Our Lady at Belem,
where he had offered up prayers for help before his departure. His
devotions completed, Vasco da Gama made his solemn entrance into Lisbon,
where he was received with a burst of popular enthusiasm, equal to that
which greeted Christopher Columbus on his return from discovering
America. King Emmanuel took the title of “Lord of the Conquest,
Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India,” which
was confirmed to him by a Bull of Pope Alexander VI. in 1502, and he
erected the superb church of Belem, as a testimonial of gratitude to
heaven. On Vasco da Gama the king conferred well-deserved honours; he
was permitted to quarter the royal arms with his own, and was granted
the office of Admiral of the Indian seas, with a large revenue to be
levied on the Indian trade; he and his brothers were granted the right
to use the prefix Dom or Lord, and a little later, when the
importance{192} of his voyage became more manifest, he was created Count da
Vidigueira.
When the rejoicings were over, King Emmanuel determined to see what
advantages could be gained from Dom Vasco da Gama’s discovery, and
despatched Pedro Alvares Cabral with a fleet of thirteen ships carrying
twelve hundred picked soldiers to establish “factories” on the Malabar
coast, for the collection of the most valuable products of the East,
which should be conveyed to Portugal in royal ships every year. And here
it is necessary to again insist upon the fact, that the Portuguese trade
with India was a royal monopoly. The Portuguese establishments in India
were not, as was the case with regard to Holland, England, and France in
later years, formed by companies of private merchants, who looked upon
the Indian trade as a speculation, but were royal factories, managed by
royal officers, and served by royal fleets. Private trade was
impossible, and not even dreamed of, because it was considered necessary
that these factories should be defended by bodies of troops and served
by powerful fleets, which cost an amount of money no private firm could
furnish. But these royal factories were intended not only to establish
and guard trade, but also to spread Christianity, and for that purpose
they included from the first not only soldiers, but missionary priests.
Pedro Alvares Cabral was driven by stress of weather to the coast of
Brazil, of which country he took possession in the name of his
sovereign, and then proceeded to follow the course laid down by Vasco da
Gama, and reached {193}Calicut in safety. He immediately established a
factory at that place, but the Moplas showed the same unfriendly
disposition which they had before exhibited towards Vasco da Gama, and
at once murdered all the colonists. Cabral then cannonaded Calicut, and
proceeded to Cannanore and Cochin, at both of which places he was
favourably received, for their Hindu Rājās were unwilling
tributaries to the Zamorin of Calicut and his Moplas; and after
purchasing great stores of pepper and other Indian commodities, the
Portuguese admiral left establishments at these two places to open up
trade, and returned home. In 1502, Vasco da Gama arrived for the second
time on the Malabar coast with twenty ships, and after again cannonading
Calicut, and destroying all the shipping in the port, he strengthened
the factories at Cochin and Cannanore and returned. On his departure,
Vincente Sodre, one of the officers he had left, deserted the factory
and set up as a pirate in the Arabian seas, being the first of those
Portuguese adventurers in the Eastern seas whose stories read like
romances. In 1503, three separate Portuguese squadrons under the command
respectively of Francisco de Alboquerque, Affonso de Alboquerque, and
Antonio de Saldanha, reached India, and the first of these captains gave
effective assistance to the Rājā of Cochin, who had been attacked
by the Zamorin for his welcome of the Portuguese, and was being besieged
in the island of Vypin. Francisco de Alboquerque was only just in time,
and to guard against such extremities in the future, he built a strong
fort, guarded with artillery, at Cochin, and when the three captains
de{195}{194}parted they left there a garrison of nine hundred men, under the
command of Duarte Pacheco. This officer performed the first great feat
of arms which illustrated the history of the Portuguese in India; with
his small garrison, enfeebled by sickness, he not only drove back the
great army which the Zamorin sent against Cochin, but utterly defeated
five thousand of his best troops in open battle. This victory
established the reputation of the Portuguese in India as soldiers; the
factories now found no difficulty in purchasing all the goods they
needed at a reasonable price; and what was more important, the fame of
Pacheco spread abroad, and he was able to send envoys into the interior
of India, who were everywhere favourably received, and generally
returned laden with presents. Pacheco’s success inspired the Portuguese
monarch with the idea that he could not only absorb the Indian trade,
but could conquer India, and Emmanuel decided that a powerful imperial
government should be established on the Malabar coast, instead of
isolated factories.
ALBOQUERQUE. (From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 11.)
The first viceroy he selected was Dom Francisco de Almeida, a Portuguese
nobleman of high rank, who had learned the art of war under Gonsalvo da
Cordova, better known in Spanish history as the “Great Captain,” and had
been a favourite of King John II. The fleet with which he set sail from
Belem on March 25, 1505, consisted of sixteen ships and sixteen
caravels, and carried fifteen hundred soldiers besides many officials
for the new establishment. On his way to India, Dom Francisco de Almeida
occupied Quiloa and Mombassa on the south-eastern coast of Africa,{196} and
erected forts, which should make them safe resting-places for the
Portuguese fleets; and on his arrival at Cannanore on October 22nd he
took the title of Viceroy of Cochin, Cannanore, and Quilon. The great
Portuguese nobleman looked upon the state of affairs in India from a
very different point of view to Cabral, Vasco da Gama, and Pacheco; he
did not regard commerce as the sole purpose of the establishments of the
Portuguese in the East, and instead of trying to open up trade as
Pacheco had done, and only defending himself when attacked, the first
viceroy adopted a vigorous policy of active interference with native
states, proselytism, and offensive war. He established his seat of
government at Cochin, and sent forth expeditions along the Malabar
coast, which generally came to blows with the Mohammedan merchants, who
saw with dismay that their commerce with Egypt by way of the Red Sea
would soon disappear. His chief commander was his son, Dom Lourenço de
Almeida, a boy in years, but a hero in the fight. On October 19, 1505,
young Lourenço cannonaded and nearly destroyed Conlão, the modern
Quilon; on March 18, 1506, he almost annihilated the fleet of the
Zamorin of Calicut, consisting of eighty-four ships and one hundred and
twenty prahs, with only eleven vessels, and received a check at Dabul,
the modern Dábhol; in 1507, he discovered the Maldive Islands, and with
Tristão da Cunha sacked the port of Ponáni, and in 1508 the young hero
was killed at Chaul in a combat against an Egyptian fleet, which had
been sent by the Mamluk Sultan to expel the Portuguese from India under
the command{197} of an admiral named Emir Hoseyn. But a more serious danger
was impending; the wrath of the Mohammedan sovereigns, whose domains
extended to the north-western coasts, and especially of the kings of
Bijápur and Gujarāt, was aroused by these aggressions, and they
collected powerful fleets and joined Emir Hoseyn. The Viceroy of India,
nothing daunted, sailed northward to avenge his son’s death, with only
nineteen ships, and after sacking Dábhol he entirely defeated the
Mohammedan fleet of more than one hundred ships, on February 2, 1509,
off the island of Diu. While the first Portuguese Viceroy was
undertaking these operations, his appointed successor, Affonso de
Alboquerque, with whom he had quarrelled, and the admiral Tristão da
Cunha were exploring the Indian Ocean, and after stopping some time at
the island of Socotra, they stormed the wealthy city of Ormuz at the
mouth of the Persian Gulf. These explorations had the most important
results, and Affonso de Alboquerque was glad, when the appointed time
arrived for him at the close of 1509, to take over the government of
India as second viceroy.
Affonso de Alboquerque was the greatest of all the Portuguese heroes who
served in India, and he owes his fame not only to his feats of arms,
numerous and glorious as they were, but to the wisdom and justice of his
civil government, and to the fact that he was a great and a far-seeing
statesman, as well as a brave warrior. Like Francisco de Almeida, he had
been a favourite and an intimate friend of King John II., in whose reign
he filled the Court office of Master {198}of the Horse. He commenced his
viceroyalty by making a fresh attack on Calicut, the headquarters of the
Moplas. He succeeded in burning the palace of the Zamorin and wrecking
the city, but the populace then arose in force and drove the Portuguese
back to their ships, killing many of their leaders, including the
Marshal of Portugal, Dom Fernando Coutinho. Alboquerque then proceeded
to take a more important step; he soon perceived that Cochin was too far
south to serve as the headquarters of either the trade or the political
dominion of the Portuguese, and that it was necessary to occupy some
more central spot on the Malabar coast for a capital. The place he
selected was Goa, a port in the possession of the Mohammedan king of
Bijápur. Thither he sailed with twenty ships and twelve hundred men; and
one feat of arms, performed by Antonio de Noronha, at Panjim, at the
mouth of the river Goa, where the present capital of the Portuguese
possessions in India is situated, laid the city open to him. The
citizens, who had been discouraged by the prophecies of a holy mendicant
that they were about to be conquered by a foreign people from a distant
land, surrendered at once; eight leading men gave Alboquerque the keys
of the gates, and the Portuguese viceroy entered the city in triumph on
February 17, 1510. But he did not hold it long, for on August 15th,
Yūsuf Adil Shah, King of Bijápur, recaptured the city after fierce
fighting. Alboquerque did not despair; he received reinforcements from
Portugal, and on November 25th, he carried the city by storm, slaying
over two thousand Mohammedans, and firmly established himself there.{199}
But Alboquerque was not satisfied with conquering an appropriate capital
for Portuguese India, he determined to make his country supreme
throughout the Eastern seas. With this idea he undertook two famous
expeditions to the east and to the west. The first Portuguese settlers
upon the Malabar coast had been told by the native traders that spices
and other produce of Asia could be obtained more cheaply further to the
east, and these stories had been repeated to King Emmanuel, who
determined to send an expedition to these “Spice Islands,” under the
command of Diogo Lopes de Sequeira. This captain reached the Malabar
coast in safety, and was favourably received by the Viceroy, Francisco
de Almeida, who found an experienced pilot for him, and gave him sixty
well-seasoned soldiers, under the command of Francisco Serrão, and
Fernão de Magalhães, who, under the name of Magellan, was to leave his
mark upon the map of the world. The pilot led the fleet skilfully, and
on September 11, 1509, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira anchored off the city of
Malacca, where the Malay chief permitted him to found a factory. On his
return to India, he reported to Alboquerque on the wealth of Malacca and
of the island of Sumatra, and that spices were both better and cheaper
there than in India. The great viceroy at once determined to see these
rich countries for himself, and, after some sharp fighting with the
Malays, he established the Portuguese power in that quarter upon a firm
basis, and returned to Goa. His expedition westwards was not so
successful. During his former campaign, in which he had taken Ormuz, he
had observed that{200} the greater portion of the Asiatic trade, which still
followed the old routes, went not by way of the Persian Gulf, but by way
of the Red Sea, and that the great entrepôt was the city of Aden. In
order to secure the entire monopoly of the Eastern trade for the new
Portuguese route round the Cape of Good Hope, it was therefore necessary
to occupy Aden. With this intention Alboquerque sailed westwards in
1513, and on Easter Eve he arrived before the city. On Easter Day he
attacked it fiercely with a force of over two thousand soldiers; but he
failed, and had to content himself with destroying the shipping in the
port. He then explored the Red Sea, and returned to Goa for the last
time.
It has been said that Alboquerque was a great statesman as well as a
great warrior, and no better proof of this can be adduced than his
treatment of the Hindu princes. He alone of Portuguese viceroys
recognized the fact the Hindus did not take kindly to the rule of the
Mohammedans, and that they would much sooner be ruled by Europeans, if
they were only just and fair-minded. It was from Mohammedan powers that
the Portuguese had met with such bitter opposition, from the Moplas of
Calicut and the King of Bijápur, and if the successors of Alboquerque
had but grasped this fact they would have found little difficulty in
leading the Hindus against the votaries of Islam. They would then have
waged against Mohammedans in India the same relentless war that their
ancestors had waged in their own fatherland, and might have established
a protectorate over {201}the Hindus without much difficulty. The wide-minded
tolerance which Alboquerque showed in his communications with the Hindu
princes, he also showed in the details of administration. He maintained
the village system, which he found existing in Goa at the time of his
conquest, and avoided all appearance of fresh taxation with as much care
as a modern English collector. The expedition to Aden was the last he
ever undertook, and on December 16, 1515, this truly great man died at
Goa, and was buried there by his own directions in the costume of a
commander of the Order of Santiago. “In such veneration was his memory
held, that the Hindus, and even the Mohammedans, were wont to repair to
his tomb, and there utter their complaints, as if in the presence of his
shade, and call upon God to deliver them from the tyranny of his
successors.”[15] What better proof of the qualities which have won for
him the title of Alboquerque “the Great” could be given than this!
J. C. Silva sculp. Olisip. in Typ. Reg. An. 1774.
Alboquerque. (After the Engraving by Silva.)
The tyranny of the successors of Alboquerque has been much exaggerated,
and in recording the accusations against them it must be remembered that
the Portuguese viceroys and governors were regarded at home as being
placed in power for two reasons, the one to send home yearly large
fleets laden with the commodities of Asia, purchased at such a low price
as to afford the king a handsome profit for his treasury, and the other
to propagate the Christian faith. Neither of these causes for the
Portuguese dominion were likely to be regarded as satisfactory by the
natives of India. The orders of{203}{202} the Directors of the English East
India Company to Warren Hastings, to take care that they should have
good dividends to declare in England, were not more imperative than the
orders of King Emmanuel and King John III. to the Portuguese governors,
that fleets heavily laden with Asiatic goods should be despatched to
Lisbon without their demanding any money from home for their purchases.
This of itself was enough to make the demands of the Portuguese viceroys
upon the natives oppressive, and it must also be remembered that men do
not leave their fatherland to live in an unhealthy climate for their own
pleasure, and that the Portuguese official was as much tempted in the
sixteenth century to “shake the pagoda tree” for his own benefit, and to
exert his authority to that effect, as an English civil servant in the
eighteenth century. Yet this search after gain was not wholly sordid,
and many gallant deeds mark the period between the death of Affonso de
Alboquerque, and the arrival of the greatest of his successors, Dom João
de Castro.
The rule of Lopo Soares de Albergaria, from 1515 to 1518, was chiefly
notable for his buildings at Goa, and for his success in opening up a
trade with Ceylon by establishing a factory and building a fort at
Colombo; and his successor, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, the discoverer of
Malacca, and fourth governor, did much to increase the development of
this trade. The fifth governor, Duarte or Edward de Menezes, had to meet
so many difficulties, and to put down so many insurrections at Ormuz,
Malacca, and Ceylon, that he begged earnestly to be relieved; and in
1524 John III. determined to send out Vasco da Gama again, with{204} the
title and powers of Viceroy, which had not been conferred since the
death of Alboquerque. But the great navigator was now an old man, and
never reached Goa to take up his office. He did, however, reach the
Indian coast, which he had first seen a quarter of a century before, and
died at Cochin, on Christmas Day, 1524. His body was buried in the
principal chapel of the Franciscan convent at Cochin, but it did not
long remain there; for in 1538 it was removed to Portugal, and finally
interred at Belem. Henrique de Menezes, who succeeded Vasco da Gama as
governor, managed to put down most of the insurrections, and after a
short interval of the rule of Lopo Vaz de Sampaio, Nuno da Cunha, the
son of the great navigator, Tristão da Cunha, succeeded to the
governorship in 1526. His government was marked by more important events
than any since that of Alboquerque, for he extended the influence of
Portugal along both the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, and established
settlements at Diu, off the coast of Kathiawār on the western, and at
Hūgli, at the mouth of the Ganges, on the eastern coast of India. The
Portuguese had, ever since the days of Dom Francisco de Almeida, desired
to obtain possession of the island of Diu, which could be easily
fortified, and would form a good headquarters for their trade and
political influence on the north-western coast of India. But all their
efforts had been in vain until the year 1535, when Bahādar Shah, the
Mohammedan king of Gujarāt, permitted them to build a fortress on the
island, and garrison it with their own troops. This he did because he
was being closely pressed by{205} Humāyūn, the Moghul emperor, and
father of Bābar. But the Mohammedan monarch soon regretted that he
had given the Portuguese such an important foothold in his dominions,
and it was after a visit he had paid to Nuno da Cunha there that he was
killed in a scuffle while disembarking from a Portuguese ship. His
successor, Mohammed III. of Gujarāt, regarded the murder of his uncle
as a proof of treachery on the part of the Portuguese, and at once
besieged Diu by sea and land. But the fortress was nobly defended; the
Portuguese women vied with the men in gallantry, and after being reduced
to the greatest extremities, the commandant, Antonio de Silveira, beat
off the assailants. The other important event of Nuno da Cunha’s rule
was the establishment of a Portuguese factory at Hūgli, at the mouth
of the Ganges, in the dominions of the King of Bengal, which for the
first time tapped the trade of that most wealthy province. These great
services during his long rule of twelve years did not protect Nuno da
Cunha from malicious accusations being brought against him at Lisbon;
exaggerated accounts of his cruelty and of the corruption of his
government were reported against him, and in 1538 he was superseded by a
viceroy, Dom Garcia de Noronha. Nuno da Cunha died on his way back to
Portugal, and the absence of his strong hand was soon felt in India.
Garcia de Noronha, a former officer of Alboquerque, died almost
immediately after his arrival, and his successors, as governors, Estevão
da Gama and Martim Affonso de Sousa distinguished their governments by
an expedition to the Red Sea, during which{206} Da Gama was defeated by the
Turks at Suez, and by the defeat of De Sousa at Tebelicavi. These checks
greatly affected the profits of the Indian trade, and John III.
determined to make a fresh departure by despatching to India Dom João de
Castro, a hero of the old Portuguese type, and the intimate friend of
his uncle, Dom Luis, Duke of Beja.
In summing up thus briefly the history of the Portuguese in India,
weight has been laid only upon its political and commercial aspect. It
was for purely commercial reasons that Prince Henry “the Navigator” had
striven to find a direct sea route to India, and Vasco da Gama’s success
had at first been looked upon merely as opening up the Indian trade; the
idea of dominion had not then occurred to the minds of the Portuguese,
and it was not until it became obvious that the commercial stations or
factories would have to be guarded and defended, that troops were
despatched as well as factors. The successful defence of Duarte Pacheco
against the army of the Zamorin of Calicut, showed how easy it would be
for the Portuguese to do more than just defend their factories, if
attacked, and Francisco de Almeida commenced a war of offence by
attacking native potentates, who refused to allow factories to be
established in their dominions. Affonso de Alboquerque originated the
idea of playing off the Hindu princes against the aggressive
Mohammedans, but none of his successors followed out his policy in this
respect. It must not, however, be thought that the Portuguese had any
idea of establishing such an empire in India as the English have built
up during the last century. Their{207} great system was to occupy, by force
if necessary, all important centres of trade along the coasts, and there
to erect powerful cities and fortresses, whither the native merchants
could bring down their commodities to be purchased and placed on board
Portuguese ships for passage to Lisbon. They made no attempt to force
their way into the interior, and only sent envoys to native princes to
secure protection for the native traders coming to their ports. They
occupied, indeed, small rural districts around their most important
stations, such as Goa and Diu, which they ruled, according to the
fashion adopted by Alboquerque in Goa, by regarding the village
communities as units, and regulating taxation accordingly. If these
facts are grasped, the tales of Portuguese tyranny and oppression fall
to the ground, for the only natives they could oppress were the
merchants, who brought goods down to the ports, and the inhabitants who
chose to dwell within the Portuguese borders. The merchants and traders
did indeed suffer, because they had to sell their merchandise by a scale
which cut their profits down much more than they relished, and the
inhabitants of the cities were ruled as inferiors, who were bound to be
subject to the Europeans in every respect. The Portuguese judges
naturally favoured their own people, and thus in many instances treated
the natives unjustly, but it may be pointed out that no merchant could
be forced to come down to the ports, and that no native could be
compelled to dwell in the Portuguese cities against his will. These
considerations, joined to a recollection of the inevitable accusations
always brought by a subject population{208} against a race of foreign
rulers, tend to prove that the accusations of tyranny and oppression
brought against the Portuguese have been greatly exaggerated, and it is
quite certain that the Hindus were quite as badly, if not worse, treated
by their Mohammedan conquerors.
In one respect alone they had a right to complain, and that was, that
the Portuguese, not satisfied with extending their commercial
transactions, attempted also to overthrow the native religions, just as
the Mohammedans did. For the Portuguese conquerors were not only
traders, but ardent Christians, firmly convinced of the truth of their
religion, and determined to spread it. The squadron commanded by Pedro
Alvares Cabral, which had been despatched to India directly after the
return of Vasco da Gama, had carried some Franciscan friars, who were
left at Cochin, in 1500, to preach their religion. They were speedily
followed by other missionaries, chiefly Dominican and Franciscan friars,
who increased in number, after the capital of the Portuguese sovereignty
was removed to Goa. Great convents arose there, and the missionaries
began their labours by preaching in the neighbouring districts, which
were divided into parishes after the European fashion, and regarded as
ecclesiastical units. The fame of the Goa missionaries was greatly
increased by the discovery or pretended discovery of the bones of St.
Thomas the Apostle at the spot, which had long attracted the common
worship of Mohammedans, Hindus, and native Christians, near Madras,
where he was reported to have been martyred. These bones were brought to
Goa in 1522,{209} during the government of Duarte de Menezes, and buried
with great pomp in the sacred shrine in the Church of St. Thomas at Goa,
where they remain to this day. These first Portuguese missionaries were
delighted to find native Christians in India when they arrived, and to
find them a powerful military caste. They did not at first inquire too
minutely into the doctrines and ceremonies of these Christians, who
belonged to the Nestorian Church, and far from persecuting them with
especial fervour, as was the case later, they regarded the very
existence of these Christians as a proof of the vitality of their own
faith. After the discovery of the bones of St. Thomas missionaries
flocked in increased numbers to India, not only from Portugal, but from
Rome itself; and in 1539 Goa was made the seat of a Roman Catholic
bishopric, and João de Alboquerque was consecrated its first bishop. But
the greatest impulse given to the cause of the propagation of the
Christian faith was the arrival in India of St. Francis Xavier in 1542,
during the government of Martim Affonso de Sousa. This great preacher
and great man was not long in making a deep impression upon the natives
of India, and the news of the converts he had made without the limits of
the Portuguese settlements, attracted a crowd of followers. The Society
of the Jesuits, of which he was one of the founders, paid especial
attention to this field of mission work, and the progress of
Christianity became more and more rapid. This was the golden age of
proselytising effort; the Hindus listened with patience to the Christian
missionaries, and did not yet begin to persecute them, and the
Inquisition which was to{211}{210} bear so heavily upon the native Church of
Nestorian Christians, did not inaugurate its forcible methods of
conversion until the year 1560.
DOM JOÃO DE CASTRO.
(After the copy given by the MS. of Pedro Barrato de Rezende of the
original portrait in the Palace of the Viceroys at Goa.)
The name of St. Francis Xavier suggests that of his illustrious friend,
Dom João de Castro, who rivalled upon the battlefield the glories of
Francisco de Almeida, Affonso de Alboquerque, and Nuno da Cunha, but who
was distinguished above them all for the noble purity of his life. De
Castro was the intimate friend of the king’s uncle, Dom Luis, Duke of
Beja, with whom he had been educated, and had won his spurs and the
admiration of the Emperor Charles V., by his conduct in the expedition
to Tunis. He had served with distinction under Garcia de Noronha and
Estevão da Gama in the Indian seas, and on his return home had been
employed in the difficult task of evacuating the various Portuguese
stations in Morocco, which it had been decided to abandon. He was
renowned for the purity and even austerity of his character, and it was
for this reason that he was appointed, in 1545, viceroy of India. The
situation there was a difficult one, for the Sultan of Turkey had, it is
said, at the request of the Venetians, who were disgusted at losing
their profitable trade with the East, sent a powerful fleet down the Red
Sea to exterminate the Portuguese in India. When João de Castro arrived
at Goa, he heard that Diu was being again besieged by Mohammed III. of
Gujarāt. The news was true, and in spite of the gallant defence of
Dom João de Mascarenhas, the besieged were driven to extremities. The
viceroy at once proceeded thither, and not only relieved the{212} fortress,
but defeated the King of Gujarāt in a pitched battle beneath the
walls. This victory, the greatest won by the Portuguese in India,
exalted the fame of the general, which was further enhanced by his
annihilation of the great Turkish fleet. After these victories João de
Castro turned to matters of internal reform, and, by a policy which
recalls that of Lord Cornwallis in Bengal in later history, he fixed the
salaries of the various civil officials and tried to put an end to the
system of corruption and peculation by which they had robbed the royal
treasury and the natives alike. He looked with especial disfavour upon
the loose and immoral life led by the Portuguese at Goa, and sternly
discouraged their luxury, which, as he declared, could only be paid for
by robbing the king of his dues. Unfortunately João de Castro, though he
was to inaugurate reforms, did not live long enough to see them carried
out, for he died in 1548, in the third year of his viceroyalty, in the
arms of his friend, St. Francis Xavier, and it is recorded to the glory
of this knight of the olden type, that, in spite of his opportunities,
he died poor, and bequeathed to his son only his sword, “ornamented,” in
the words of his biographer, “with a few stones of no great value, but
with a glory beyond price.”
The immediate successors of Dom João de Castro, Garcia de Sá, Jorge
Cabral, Affonso de Noronha, and Pedro de Mascarenhas, found no great
perils to meet, since the victory of Diu had terrified the Mohammedans
for a time, and none of them left any important traces upon the history
of the Portuguese in India. The government of Dom Constantino de
Braganza,{213} a scion of the most noble house in Portugal next to royalty,
marked a return to the system of Dom João de Castro, whom he imitated
not only in his internal reforms, but in his gallantry in the field. He
it was who took and occupied Daman, which, with Goa and Diu, remains to
this day a possession of Portugal. He was still in office when the death
of John III. left the crown of Portugal to a minor, and the greatness of
his country, and even its independence, was on the point of
disappearing.
But the Portuguese power in Asia must not be regarded as being confined
to India, though Goa remained its headquarters, and the centre from
which the homeward-bound fleets sailed. It will be remembered that
Affonso de Alboquerque made expeditions both to the east and west; and
his successors, during the century of the Portuguese monopoly of the
Asiatic trade, maintained and extended their commercial operations in
both directions. But before touching on these extensions attention must
be called to the care with which the greatest Portuguese governors kept
up the establishments on the south-eastern coast of Africa. Mozambique,
which still belongs to Portugal, Mombassa, and Melinda, were all
fortified with the utmost science of the time, for the homeward-and
outward-bound fleets always paused at one or other or at all of these
places before facing or after meeting the perils of the Indian Ocean, in
order to refit and take in provisions. The dangers of the passage round
the Cape of Good Hope were also sufficiently serious to need rest or
preparation, for to mention but two disasters, Francisco{214} de Almeida,
the first Viceroy of India was wrecked in Saldanha Bay, and died there
on his way back from his command; and a few years after occurred the
wreck, imprisonment among the savages, and death of Dom Manoel de Sousa
and his wife, which Camoens has immortalized in touching words.[16] More
important than these African settlements was the city of Ormuz, at the
mouth of the Persian Gulf, which became the headquarters of the Persian
trade with Europe by means of the Portuguese fleets. It has been seen
that Aden was too strong for Alboquerque to capture; one of his
successors, Affonso de Noronha, was more successful in 1551, but he only
held the key of the Red Sea for a single year, after which it was
recaptured by the Turks.
Far more valuable was the settlement of Malacca, which was placed upon a
secure footing by Alboquerque. It became the centre of a great trade
with Java, Sumatra, and the Spice Islands, and from it Fernão de
Magalhães and Francisco Serrão prosecuted their discoveries among the
Moluccas and the Celebes. The history of this settlement is full of
interest; it was repeatedly attacked by the Achinese and other natives,
and some of its sieges are as famous as those of Diu, though not
conducted against such civilized opponents. But Malacca was not only the
headquarters of the Spice Islands trade, but the port from which
explorations were directed northwards. It was from Malacca that Duarte
Coelho started to explore the coasts of Cochin China, and made his
adventurous journey into Siam, and from Malacca also Fernão{215} Peres de
Andrade started to open up trade with the mighty and populous empire of
China. There can be little doubt, according to a most distinguished
Portuguese historian,[17] that the embassy, which King Emmanuel
despatched in 1517 to the emperor of China, was caused by a knowledge of
Marco Polo’s travels, and by the interest inspired by his account of the
far empire of Cathay. At any rate it was as an ambassador from one
monarch to another, and not as a conqueror that Fernão Peres de Andrade
was sent to China with letters and presents. And the very fact of this
embassy suggests a doubt whether the Portuguese would have ever acted as
they did in India had there been a monarch there of such power as the
emperor of China was reported to possess, or would have been contented
to be traders only. De Andrade safely reached Canton by way of Malacca
in 1518, but in spite of his letters and presents he was long detained
there and not allowed to proceed to Pekin until 1521. When the Chinese
thoroughly understood that the Portuguese came only to trade and not to
conquer, they permitted the new-comers to establish a factory, first at
Lium-po; and in 1549 at Chin Chee; and, finally, in 1557, in the year of
the death of John III., at the request of the Chinese Government, the
Portuguese withdrew their other factories and established themselves in
the island of Macao, at the mouth of the Canton river. Here they carried
on a prosperous trade, and in 1583 they received leave to{216} dispense
justice within their island, and in 1587 were recognized as independent
there.
The first communication of the Portuguese with Japan is still more
curious, and is connected with the history of one of those adventurous
travellers who boldly traversed the most distant lands of Asia, long
before Englishmen or Dutchmen had ventured to assail the Portuguese
monopoly. Fernão Mendes Pinto has for generations been regarded as a
typical liar, an accusation generally believed in England from the
famous line of Congreve in “Love for Love:” (act ii. scene v.) “Mendes
Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.”
But modern inquiry has shown that though he doubtless exaggerated, and
drew strange inferences, his curious “Peregrinação” or Travels, which
was first published in 1614, and was translated during the seventeenth
century into English, French, and Spanish, contains essentially a true
account of his adventures. His career is typical of that of many another
Portuguese adventurer in the East. He first went to Asia in 1537, and
during his wanderings was five times shipwrecked, thirteen times taken
captive, and seventeen times sold as a slave. On his way out he was
taken prisoner between Socotra and the Persian Gulf, and sold as a slave
at Mocha, where he remained until ransomed by the Portuguese governor of
Ormuz. After many daring adventures, which savour of piracy, he was
engaged in 1542 in a strange expedition to Calempin, near Pekin, which
he had organized to plunder the tombs of seventeen {217}Chinese emperors
there. On his way back from this sacrilegious attempt he was wrecked off
the Chinese coast, and set to work in repairing the Great Wall of China.
While there he was made a prisoner by the Tartars during one of their
invasions, and after being present at a Tartar siege of Pekin was
carried away into Tartary. After various adventures he managed to get
back to China, and he then paid his first visit to Japan. His account of
the wealth of the Japanese islands excited the minds of the Portuguese
officials on the Chinese coast, and a fleet of nine ships was placed
under his command at Ning-po, with orders to open up a trade with Japan.
Ill luck again pursued him; eight of his ships foundered, and the one
upon which he himself sailed, was wrecked on the Loo-Choo Islands.
Undiscouraged by all his reverses, he continued to represent the wealth
of Japan to his superiors in China and at Malacca, and in 1548 he
established a factory in the neighbourhood of Yokohama. Here he did good
service, and besides opening up a trade in Japanese goods, he made a
large fortune for himself. With this fortune he was on his way back to
Portugal in 1553, when the ecclesiastics at Goa worked upon his
religious sentiments, which, as in other Portuguese adventurers, must
have been very deep, though they do not seem to have influenced him in
his dealings with Asiatics, and persuaded him to devote nearly all his
wealth to the establishment of a seminary at Goa for the education of
missionaries to Japan.
The career of Mendes Pinto illustrates the extraordinary energy and
indomitable courage of the Portuguese in Asia, and it is a subject for
wonder how{218} one little country, one of the very smallest of the European
states, could produce not only great governors and conquerors, like
Francisco de Almeida, Affonso de Alboquerque, Nuno da Cunha, and João de
Castro, and their lieutenants; and military heroes like Duarte Pacheco,
Antonio de Silveira, and João de Mascarenhas, and their soldiers; but
also daring adventurers like Duarte Coelho, who boldly penetrated into
the interior of Siam, and Mendes Pinto. These men, from the highest to
the lowest, seem to have had unbounded confidence in themselves, and, as
will be seen later, two Portuguese adventurers, with hardly any support,
Sebastião Gonzales and Philip de Brito, established themselves as
practically independent princes in Arakan. It has been shown that this
extraordinary energy and enterprise exhausted the kingdom of Portugal.
Of the thousands who left their homes in Europe, but an infinitesimal
portion ever returned. Not one of the early governors of Portuguese
India died in Portugal until the time of Dom Constantino de Braganza;
they either died in India, like Alboquerque, Vasco da Gama, and Noronha,
or on their way home, like Almeida and Nuno da Cunha. The drain upon the
energies of the people was immense, and the wonder is not that Portugal
was soon exhausted, but that it ever put forth such vitality at all. The
greatness of the Portuguese in India was due to the courage and heroism
of the Portuguese people, and these qualities they owed to a succession
of great kings, who had trained the people to freedom, self-reliance,
and constancy; were it not for great kings like John “the Great” and
John “the Perfect,{219}” and great princes like Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, and
Prince Henry “the Navigator,” the Portuguese nation would never have
done what it did, and the Story of Portugal teaches the useful lesson
that a people, trained to lofty thoughts and a high conception of duty,
will be sure to find scope for its energies, and exhibit the result of
its training in noble deeds.
{220}
X.
THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL.
THE history of the Portuguese in South America differs greatly from the
story of the growth of their power in Asia; in America they found no
wealthy cities and civilized peoples, only poor natives, and it was no
wonder that their chief efforts in the sixteenth century were devoted to
the development of the lucrative Eastern trade and to Asiatic
exploration. Had any one told King Emmanuel that the country which Pedro
Alvares Cabral discovered by a mere chance on his way to Asia, would
prove of more enduring value to Portugal than the settlements in India,
that monarch would not have believed him. Yet such has been the case.
Whereas at the present time the Portuguese possessions in Asia have
dwindled down to the settlements of Goa, Daman, and Diu in India, and
the island of Macao, which are of very little value to the mother
country, the great republic of Brazil has expanded into an independent
state containing fourteen millions of inhabitants, or more than three
times the population of Portugal.[18] It is true that{221} the governments
of Portugal and her flourishing daughter across the Atlantic are
separated, and that they are politically independent of each other, yet
Brazil still continues in close alliance with Portugal, and receives
from the mother country the crowds of sturdy immigrants, who are
steadily expanding the resources of the greatest country in South
America. Brazilians are as proud of the great deeds of their European
ancestors as the Portuguese themselves, and even surpass the inhabitants
of the mother country in their admiration for Camoens, and the assiduous
study of his works. The story of the settlement and gradual colonization
of Brazil cannot rival in romantic interest that of the Portuguese
exploits in Asia, but it is nevertheless instructive to study the slow
growth of the colony which has now become a mighty empire.
It was upon April 24, 1500, that Pedro Alvares Cabral, the admiral
commanding the fleet which King Emmanuel had ordered to India, on
receiving the news of the successful voyage of Vasco da Gama, caught
sight of an unknown country towards the west He had stood out to sea
after passing the Cape Verde Islands, or, according to some authorities,
had been driven out to sea by a storm and had not expected to see land
at all, so that the discovery, which proved of the greatest value to
Portugal, was the result of chance, and not of deliberate exploration.
He was unable to land at first on account of the surf,{222} and it was not
until he reached 15° north latitude, that he was able to find a harbour,
to which he gave the name of Porto Seguro or Safe Port. He landed and
took possession of the new country in the name of the King of Portugal,
and after erecting a cross gave it the name of Santa Cruz, which
remained its official name for many years, before the popular name of
Brazil, which was given to it from the quantity of brazil-trees it
contained, was adopted. Cabral found the country to be fertile and well
watered, and inhabited by a mild and inoffensive people, who allowed him
to explore a little, and to take on board fruit and water. He at once
perceived the value of his discovery, and sent off one of his ships to
Lisbon with information of it, and with one of the inhabitants on board
to be taught the Portuguese language. He also left two of his own men in
the country to learn the language of the natives and to explore, and
then proceeded on his way to India.
King Emmanuel sent various expeditions to explore this new country,
notably two under Amerigo Vespucci in 1501 and 1503, and the greater
part of the coast line down to the River Plate was visited and mapped
out by this industrious explorer. But neither Vespucci, nor the first
colonists despatched from Portugal, reported the existence of more than
a fertile country, and the Portuguese people being at that time in the
full excitement of their first conquests in Asia, and the rich trade to
be opened up there, paid but little attention to the new possession
across the Atlantic. It was soon discovered that there were no wealthy
cities or powerful dynasties among the{223} inhabitants of Brazil, such as
Cortez met with in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru, and there seemed to be
little prospect of a lucrative trade. So little was known, indeed, of
the natural wealth of Brazil, that Spain, though by the Bull of
Alexander VI. it had a right to all discoveries in that quarter of the
globe, consented to give up to Portugal undisputed possession of the
whole coast line of Brazil from the River Maranham to the River Plate.
Of the aboriginal inhabitants of this vast country, curious accounts
were written by the first Portuguese explorers. They were reported to be
partly nomadic, and to live chiefly on fish and fruit, and on the game
which they killed in their forests with bows and arrows. They wore
little or no clothes, and generally painted their bodies, and some
tribes used to smear themselves with gum, and stick beautiful feathers
all over them, which made them look at a distance more like great birds
than human beings. They grew no corn, but made cakes of cassava root,
and used to drink either the pressed juice of fruit or an intoxicating
liquor made from honey. They understood how to spin and weave, and build
huts; they were great smokers of tobacco, and had some knowledge of the
usefulness of the medicinal herbs and drugs which abound in Brazil.
Their country, though fertile, seemed destitute of everything of value
to Europeans, and it was at first thought that the discovery of Cabral
would in no way contribute to the wealth or prosperity of the Portuguese
people.
So firmly was this believed, and so absorbed were{224} the king, nobles, and
people of Portugal in their Asiatic explorations and conquests, that for
many years no attempt was made to form settlements in South America, and
no effort to explore the interior of the continent. Two royal ships only
for a long time were despatched to Brazil every year to take out and
land there condemned convicts and women of bad character, and to bring
back parrots and different varieties of wood, notably the brazil wood
which gave the new country its popular name. A few families of settlers,
partly from Madeira and partly from northern Portugal, also went out on
their own account, and established themselves in various chosen spots,
where they introduced agriculture and tried in vain to make the natives
work for them as slaves. No attempt was made by the Portuguese monarch
to superintend these infant settlements, or to decree any form of
government for the stray colonists and convicts, who did what seemed
good in their own eyes, and in many instances treated the natives with
the utmost severity. While soldiers, governors, and officials were
despatched in numbers to Asia, there was no thought taken of America;
and as one instance of the manner in which Brazil was treated, it may be
mentioned that the importation of ginger from that country was
prohibited in order not to infringe the Indian monopoly.
This neglect suddenly ceased about the year 1530, when the rumour spread
throughout Portugal that Brazil abounded in gold, silver, and precious
stones. The natives had made no attempt to work mines, for they attached
no value to these commodities, but the{225} knowledge that the precious
metals abounded in Peru caused people to believe that they also existed
in other parts of the South American continent. The discovery of gold in
small quantities, and the rumours of an El Dorado in the interior, soon
attracted crowds of adventurers from all parts of Europe; many families
from Portugal were then encouraged to emigrate in order to
counterbalance these adventurers, and the settlement of the new country
was thus commenced in earnest. King John III. was as much excited by the
news of the discovery of gold as his courtiers and people, and he sent
over to Brazil in 1531 the first royal governor, Martim Affonso de
Sousa, with instructions to assert the royal power over the rapidly
increasing population of colonists and adventurers, and to arrange for
the future government of the country. Martim Affonso de Sousa, who was
afterwards Governor-General of Portuguese India, was a wise and prudent
statesman; though unsupported by any soldiers he made a sort of royal
progress through Brazil, and he strongly advised the king to let the
country develop by itself without interference from home. For
government, he advised that the form of administration which had sprung
up in the various settled districts should be confirmed and not
interfered with. This form of government was simply the combination of
all the inhabitants of each settlement into a sort of little state,
which elected an officer called captain, who exercised a sort of
patriarchal authority, and superintended measures of defence against
either natives or other colonies of settlers. These captains held no
royal commission,{226} and imposed no taxes; every man was able to do pretty
much what he liked in his own house, and each settlement was ruled not
by law, but by the general sentiment of the community. These captains
had no authority but what they derived from the willing obedience of the
settlers, and every captain exercised more or less authority according
to his personal character. Martim Affonso de Sousa saw the advantages of
such a system for a new colony, and he advised the king not to send out
royal officials from home whose authority would probably be ignored, but
to confirm these captains in their authority, and that the settlements
already made should be recognized as “captainships.” This was
accordingly done; the king was only too glad not to have to despatch
soldiers to America as he wanted all he could raise for Asia, and he
sanctioned the measures taken by his representative. But he further
subdivided the country into three vast “chief captainships,” which he
granted to João de Barros, the Portuguese Livy and historian of the
Portuguese in Asia, Ayres da Cunha, and Fernão Alvares de Andrade, with
instructions to search for gold mines and to exercise a general
supervision over the government of the country.
The colonists, who flocked to Brazil from Portugal at this time, were of
a very different type to the Portuguese who were sent to Asia. The
latter were chiefly soldiers, sailors, and officials, despatched to
India and the settlements in the East in royal fleets as servants of the
Crown, who, while acknowledging themselves servants of the king, yet
went to the East{227} with the idea of making their own fortunes, and
eventually returning home to Portugal, while the Brazilian colonists
went out at their own expense with their wives and families, and made
their homes in their adopted country. These men were invaluable to a new
country; they went out with no intention of ever returning home, and
with the power and will to labour with their hands. Throughout the
sixteenth century a steady succession of Portuguese emigrants made their
way to Brazil, either on account of the favourable report of its climate
and resources, which they received from their friends or relations
already settled there, or in order to escape the misfortunes impending
on their own country, and more especially the heavy hand of the
Inquisition. Mention has been made of the vast importation of slaves
into Portugal; this employment of negro labour threw a number of
agricultural labourers out of work, who did not care to enlist as
soldiers for the East, and could not make a livelihood in cities, and
from this class many of the first colonists to Brazil came. Some weight,
too, must be attached to the adventurous nature of the Portuguese
people; and this side of their character, which showed itself in
individuals in the East, made men who loved a family life better than
fighting find their way to the western continent. The colonization of
Brazil was essentially popular; it was not initiated by king, priests,
or nobles; and illustrates the extreme self-reliance and daring which
made Portugal so great at this period. The one blot upon the careers of
these early settlers was their treatment of the natives. Accustomed to
the existence{228} of slavery at home, they tried to make the natives work
for them, and this attempt brought about a bitter hatred between the
aboriginal races and the immigrants, which showed itself in murder and
massacre. The steady tide of emigration to Brazil did not at this time
contribute to the wealth of the mother country; on the contrary, it must
be noted as one of the chief causes of that depopulation of Portugal,
which has been spoken of as the germ of the decadence of the Portuguese
power.
It has been said that some of the emigrants from Portugal to Brazil were
moved by a fear of the Inquisition, and hoped to escape from it by going
to the New World. Especially was this the case with numbers of the
“novaes Christiãos,” or half-converted Jews. This class comprised many
families of wealth and influence, who, when they saw the rapid approach
of persecution, removed en masse to Brazil. In the new country they
thought themselves free, and were joined by many of their unconverted
brethren, who had been expelled by King Emmanuel. As usual, even if not
wealthy, these people were able to raise money, and they brought into
the new colony, what it most needed, capital. Many of the greatest
families in Brazil trace their descent from these laborious and
hard-working colonists, who, as in every other place, gave an impulse to
trade and industrial development unfelt before. It was owing to their
perspicacity that the sugar-cane, the greatest source of Brazilian
wealth, was introduced into the colony from Madeira in the year 1548,
and they started the direct slave trade with the Guinea Coast,
recognizing both the impossibility of{229} reducing the aboriginal races
into a state of servitude, and the advantages of negro labour. From all
these causes, Brazil was growing a wealthy colony by the middle of the
sixteenth century, possessing many well-populated and well-cultivated
districts upon the sea coast, surrounding the various ports and
harbours, where prosperous towns had sprung up, of which may be noted at
this time Pernambuco, Tamacara, Ilheos, Porto Seguro, and St. Vincent.
The prosperity of Brazil attracted the attention of John III., and he at
last decided to establish a viceroyalty there, instead of leaving the
colonists to govern themselves, and for the first governor-general he
selected a nobleman of talent and experience, Dom Thomas de Sousa. At
the same time the king revoked his decree forming the three “chief
captainships,” and granted his representative full powers to arrange for
a new system of administration. In 1549 Dom Thomas de Sousa arrived in
Brazil with a fleet of six ships of war, many officials for the new
government, a strong force of soldiers, and the first contingent of
Jesuits, who were despatched with the especial purpose of converting the
natives. Fortunately for Brazil, Thomas de Sousa was a great statesman;
he made no attempt to enforce his powers unduly; he carefully avoided
interfering with the subordinate captainships, and left the system of
local government established in each without modification; he made no
attempt to levy taxes or to interfere with the liberties of the people,
and even avoided quartering his soldiers in any of the existing towns.
He perceived that the weak point of the existing administration was
that{230} the captainships were too independent of each other, scattered as
they were down the coast like little states, and he therefore determined
to found a capital, and to establish a central government, which,
without interfering with local liberties, should become a court of
appeal, and regulating power over them. The place he selected for his
capital was at the head of All Saints Bay, better known as the Bay of
Bahia, where he erected the city of San Salvador. This town he made the
headquarters of his troops, and the seat of the central government, and
the Jesuit fathers also made it their point of departure. The most
important question that Thomas de Sousa had to face was the treatment of
the aboriginal tribes. The attempts of the Portuguese settlers to reduce
them to slavery had been met with stubborn resistance, and a chronic war
raged along all the landward boundaries of the captainships. The natives
did not often attack the settlements of the Europeans, but they resisted
any advance towards the interior, and small parties of Portuguese
attempting to settle in the interior were often massacred. Dom Thomas de
Sousa determined to check this continuous guerilla warfare by both
warlike and peaceful measures. He sent his troops, and led them himself,
against tribes which had committed any particular act of atrocity, and
punished them severely, and at the same time he gave all the help in his
power to the measures of the Jesuits for civilizing them.
The history of the Jesuits in Brazil is far more glorious if less
interesting than that of the Jesuits in India. In America they had not
to contend with{231} the trained and subtle intellects of the Hindus, who
were able and ready to meet them in the most abstruse philosophical
arguments, but with simple-minded savages willing to be taught. The
success of the famous Society was unbounded; the teachings of
Christianity did far more to quiet the aboriginal inhabitants than the
swords of De Sousa’s soldiers, and in a comparatively short space of
time, either Jesuits, or native emissaries trained and taught by them,
had penetrated many miles into the interior of the continent. The rapid
conversion and civilization of the native tribes produced many fortunate
results: the great domain of Portugal in South America was saved much of
the terrible warfare with savages, which marks the history of the
English settlers in North America; but, on the other hand, peace between
the two races brought about intermarriage, and produced a class of
mestizos, or half-breeds, which now includes about a quarter of the
population. This conversion to the Christian religion was not hastened
or in any way assisted by the terrible power of the Inquisition. That
institution, which did so much to weaken the influence of Christianity
in India, by its auto-da-fés and its persecution of the Nestorian
Christians was never allowed to take root in Brazil, and the atrocities
of Goa were not imitated at San Salvador or Rio de Janeiro. Many reasons
have been given for the non-establishment of the Inquisition, but the
chief credit is undoubtedly due to Dom Thomas de Sousa, who was well
aware of the services rendered to Brazil by the “novaes Christiãos” and
other persons, whose orthodoxy could be impeached, and who urged at
the{233}{232} Court of Lisbon, that it would be impossible to establish such a
hated institution as the Inquisition against the will of the people of
the captainships without the assistance of a powerful army, and as the
king wanted all his soldiers for India, he gave up the idea of setting
up an offshoot of the Holy Office in America.
PROCESSION OF AN AUTO DA FÉ.
(From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne et Portugal.” La Haye, 1720.)
The establishment of the Jesuits in Brazil, the foundation of a central
authority to superintend but not harass the captainships, and the
pursuance of a steady and uniform policy towards the natives, are the
points which mark the government of Dom Thomas de Sousa. That of his
successor, Duarte da Costa, was less important than his predecessor’s.
He followed De Sousa’s example, and the prosperity of Brazil became so
obvious that emigration from unhappy and declining Portugal continued to
such an extent that the Europeans in the colony doubled in number during
his administration. One point of his administration deserves notice,
namely, that he superseded the old earthen fortifications round the
principal towns by walls, and erected forts to guard the most important
harbours, mounted with artillery. These precautions show that there was
fear of foreign aggression; other European nations heard of the wealth
and fertility of Brazil, and coveted its possession, and a systematic
attempt to oust or conquer the Portuguese was made in the next century
by the Dutch. During the sixteenth century, however, only one nation,
the French, attempted to make a settlement in Brazil, and their effort
deserves a brief notice.
France, it is well known, was torn by religious wars during the
sixteenth century, and it was one of the{234} Huguenot leaders, Nicolas
Durant, Sieur de Villegagnon and Vice-Admiral of Brittany, who first
conceived the idea of expatriating himself and founding a colony with
his co-religionists in the fertile country of Brazil. The Admiral de
Coligny warmly supported this scheme, and obtained leave from Henry II.
to put it into execution. Three large vessels were accordingly
chartered, and a number of intending colonists set sail from Havre for
Brazil in May, 1555, under the command of Villegagnon. They reached
South America in November, and, without even attempting to obtain the
consent of either of the King of Portugal or of the authorities of the
captainship in which they landed, deliberately settled in an eligible
spot, and for protection alike against the natives and the Portuguese,
they built Fort Coligny. Villegagnon immediately reported his success to
the admiral, who sent on his letter to Calvin at Geneva. Calvin
expressed his satisfaction at the notion of a Protestant colony in that
quarter of the New World, and with his approbation a Genevese named
Dupont, and two ministers, Richer and Chartier, collected together three
hundred more French Huguenots and joined the original settlers in 1557
at Fort Coligny. Violent religious quarrels soon broke out between
Villegagnon and Richer, and the newly-arrived colonists first removed to
the banks of the Rio de Janeiro, and then returned to France, where they
vehemently reviled Villegagnon. He returned to France to meet their
accusations, and the Portuguese, under their governor, Emmanuel de Sá,
took advantage of his withdrawal to demolish Fort Coligny and expel the
French{235} settlers. Thus ended the first attempt of the French to settle
in Brazil.
The Portuguese possession of Brazil was to be far more dangerously
disputed by the Dutch in the following century, and the only reason why
they did not lose their American, as they did their Asiatic dominion is
to be found in the method by which the colony had been settled. What was
best in old Portugal, not necessarily what was bravest, but what was
best and most industrious had gone to Brazil; the colonists there had
been most wisely and prudently governed; they had been allowed to
develop free from all restrictions by the wise policy of prudent
governors; and the result of this free development was that the
Brazilians remained Portuguese at heart. They repulsed the attempts of
the Dutch, and even, when able to stand alone, they preferred to cling
to the mother country. Therefore it was that when in the eighteenth
century the Portuguese possessions in Asia were only a drain on the
exchequer of the kingdom, Brazil became the main source of the wealth of
the Portuguese Crown. Little did Cabral, or King Emmanuel, think that
Brazil would be a far more valuable possession to Portugal than Cochin,
or Goa, or Malacca, and that it was so was due to the manner in which it
was settled; for colonies, whose prosperity rests on stout hearts and
industrious hands, are of a lasting value to their mother country, while
possessions, won and held by force of arms, are only of fictitious
advantage and of transient value to the conquering race.{236}
XI.
THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ—DOM SEBASTIAN AND THE CARDINAL HENRY.
THE germs of the rapid decline of Portugal have been already noticed in
discussing the reigns of Emmanuel and John III.; the country, exhausted
by its efforts to conquer Asia and colonize Brazil, and deprived of
liberty of thought by the deadly influence of the Inquisition, was fast
losing its old vitality; and what Portuguese were left in Portugal were
either enervated by luxury in the upper classes and slaves to the Court,
or in the lower beggars upon the charity of the King and the Church. The
Portuguese of the upper classes, who preserved the old Portuguese spirit
of daring were in Asia; the sturdiest peasantry of the lower classes had
found their way to Madeira or Brazil. Cultivated mainly by slaves,
subject to an absolutist and bigoted court, and chiefly inhabited by
slaves, priests, and beggars, it was no wonder that keen observers, like
the Dutchman Cleynaerts, perceived that beneath its appearance of
seeming prosperity, the Portuguese kingdom was rotten to the core.
Lisbon was indeed the centre of the trade of{237} the East; it was from the
Tagus that the ships from the rest of Europe came to fetch the muslins
of Bengal, the brocades of Gujarāt, the “calicos” of Calicut, the
spices of the “Spice Islands,” the pepper of the Malabar coast, and the
teas and silks of China. Lisbon was the commercial capital of the world;
the King of Portugal was the richest sovereign in Europe. But in spite
of wealth and luxury and universal consideration Portugal was a decaying
power, and a single shock was sufficient to strike the country from its
place, as the leading nation of Europe, the nation of heroes, and leave
it defenceless against foreign foes.
This shock was supplied by the African expedition of Dom Sebastian and
its disastrous result, and Portugal was then an easy prey to the
ambition of Philip II. of Spain. The reign of Dom Sebastian has
therefore a pathetic interest to posterity: the romantic character of
the young king; his gallantry, and his death on the field of battle; and
the sudden end of the house of Aviz, which had seemed so powerful, have
contributed to make this reign one of the best known to students of
general history in the whole annals of Portugal. To contemporaries this
sudden collapse of the kingdom, which a few years before had seemed so
great, appeared nothing short of marvellous, and political philosophers
were never weary of dwelling on this extinction and finding reasons for
it. Rabid Protestants argued that it was all due to the Inquisition;
humanitarians agreed that it was a punishment for the high-handed
conduct of the Portuguese “conquistadores” in the East; shortsighted
historians attributed it entirely to the defeat{238} of Dom Sebastian in
Africa. But more careful inquiry has shown that the seeds of decline had
long been planted, and that the fall of Portugal from her high estate
was due to the exhaustion of her vital energies and to the rapid
depopulation of her territory in Europe. No country can continue to
exist and be a power, which sends forth all its best energies to foreign
lands and foreign continents, and becomes exhausted at home; it might as
well be expected that a man should be vigorous when his heart is
hopelessly diseased.
Portugal was thus already rapidly decaying, when an infant of three
years old became its monarch. Three times before in its history minors
had succeeded to the throne, but in each case wise regents had governed
the country, and the minorities had been marked by advance not
retrogression. The first King of Portugal, Affonso Henriques, was but
three years old, when he succeeded to his country; but the wisdom of his
mother, Donna Theresa, during his minority paved the way for his
subsequent success. Sancho II. was but a boy when he became king; but
the great Bishop of Lisbon, by his self-abnegation, made his minority a
triumph. Affonso V. had also been a child sovereign; but his uncle, the
great Duke of Coimbra, ruled so wisely, that the king’s coming of age
proved to be a disaster, not an advantage, to the country. But there
were no such regents for the minority of Dom Sebastian: his grandmother
was Spanish to the core, and loved Spain more than Portugal; his
heir-presumptive was his great-uncle Dom Henry, Cardinal and Grand
Inquisitor of the kingdom.{239}
LISBON IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (From Braun and
Hohenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum, 1574.)
{240}
The youthful king had none to help him. His father Dom João, the only
son of John III., had died fifteen days before the birth of his only
child, and his mother, Donna Joanna, the daughter of the Emperor Charles
V., had immediately retired to Spain, leaving the child to the care of
his grandparents. On the death of John III. in 1557, his queen, Donna
Catherine, the sister of Charles V., assumed the regency in the name of
her grandson. From the very first, the Portuguese people, from the
highest to the lowest, disapproved of her rule; she was so aggressively
Spanish in speech, bearing, and appearance, and had so persistently
refused to identify herself with her adopted country, in spite of her
long residence there, that every one believed her to be plotting to
secure the eventual succession of her favourite nephew, Philip II. of
Spain, to the crown of Portugal. Her bigotry and encouragement of the
Inquisition did not tend to make her popular, and national prejudice
declared itself strongly against her. Yet she was not a bad ruler; she
maintained the old servants of John III., and the machinery of
administration though in many places clogged by corruption, went on
smoothly, and she even managed to despatch a sufficiently powerful army
to relieve Mazagon, when it was besieged by the Moors. Yet throughout
her five years’ tenure of power the queen-regent found herself hampered
by the intrigues of the Cardinal Henry, who, as heir to the throne,
thought he ought to be in her place, and at last she decided to give up
the struggle, and in 1562 she retired to Spain.
The Cardinal Henry then satisfied his ambition{241} and became regent of the
kingdom, of which he was to be for a short time the unfortunate monarch,
and during his rule the government of the country fell entirely into the
hands of two brothers, who had made themselves very conspicuous in the
intrigues which had led to the retirement of Queen Catherine. Of these
brothers, the elder, Luis Gonçalves da Camara, was an able Jesuit, who
had been appointed confessor and tutor to the young king, while the
younger, Martim, was prime minister, and carried on the work of
administration during the regency of the Cardinal Henry. The two
brothers were both men of considerable ability, and, though they made no
attempt to initiate reforms or to check the decay of Portugal, they
managed to conceal her rottenness as much as possible from the eyes of
Europe. In 1568 Dom Sebastian was declared of age by the Camaras, though
only in his fifteenth year, and from that time they excluded their
former master, the Cardinal, from even a semblance of power. This
behaviour did not ensure their continuance in office, for as soon as the
young king began to take an active interest in affairs, he dismissed the
brothers, and placed the chief power in the hands of an upright
nobleman, Dom Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro.
The character of Dom Sebastian was one of the most important factors in
bringing about the final overthrow of Portugal, and therefore deserves
some examination, the more especially as the nature of the Portuguese
monarchy was now entirely absolutist, owing to the wealth brought into
the private treasury of the king by the Asiatic trade, and his
consequent{242} independence of the Cortes. The young king was rather German
than Portuguese in appearance, with his blue eyes and fair hair and his
face disfigured by the Hapsburg lip, and in his nature there was much of
the Teuton dreaminess and love of the marvellous, which impelled him to
take part in rash undertakings.[19] He was fond of solitude, and of
building up castles in the air, in which he always appeared as a
Christian hero exterminating the Mohammedans. For with his German
dreaminess he united a truly Spanish fanaticism. His tutor, Luis
Gonçalves da Camara, made him a bigot, and his governor, Dom Aleixo or
Alexis de Menezes, taught him to look upon warlike enterprise as the
chief aim of a monarch’s career, and the double teaching had inspired
him with crusading ardour. He was not likely to be satisfied like his
grandfather, John III., with showing his zeal for Christianity by
rigorous orthodoxy and systematic persecution at home, but longed rather
to unite war with religion, and to spread Christianity, like St. Louis
of France, by his sword. To fanaticism and warlike ambition he added an
obstinacy and imperiousness of character, which made him a tyrant. While
training himself from boyhood for war, he determined to train his people
also by issuing a sumptuary edict that none of his subjects might have
more than two dishes, and those of the simplest character, for their
meals, forgetting that no decree could alter the daily life of his
people. Lastly, with these characteristics he united{243} a spirit of
profoundest melancholy, which is evident in his portraits and in all his
actions, a melancholy which seemed to presage his early and tragic
death, and is indicated by the motto he selected for himself:
“Un bel morir tutta la vita honora.”
Such a monarch was not the man to check the decadence of Portugal; only
a practical man, who should try to husband the resources of the nation,
could have attempted such a task, and even he would have had
difficulties to face which might well seem insurmountable. But practical
measures of reform, such as a systematic attempt to regulate the
expenditure of the kingdom, and an effort to check the corruption which
had grown up in all departments of the state, demanded an amount of
serious and prolonged labour which the dreamy king was little inclined
to bestow; he thought he had done enough in issuing his sumptuary edict,
and paid no further attention to the evils which were sapping the
strength of his kingdom. For one measure, however, he deserves much
credit. Though paying no attention to the slaves in Portugal, and
regarding negroes as a race made for slavery, he yet under the influence
of the Jesuits issued a decree of the greatest importance for the colony
of Brazil, by which it was ordered that for the future none of the
aboriginal Brazilians should be publicly sold or sent as slaves to work
in the plantations, except prisoners taken in a just war. Even in the
higher domain of foreign politics as opposed to internal administration,
he made no attempt to watch over the interests of Portugal.{244} His early
marriage was a matter of supreme importance to the kingdom, for the only
male heir of the house of Aviz was his great-uncle, the Cardinal, and
the deaths of Dom Sebastian and Dom Henry without direct heirs would
inevitably be followed by a civil war arising from the disputed
succession. This consideration weighed but little with the romantic
monarch, who after making a half-hearted attempt in 1570 to secure the
hand of the beautiful Princess Margaret, sister of Charles IX. of
France, the famous “Reine Margot,” by the mediation of Dom Luis de
Torres, abandoned the idea of marriage, and devoted himself to his
schemes of fighting the Mohammedans.
The times were singularly unfit for a war against the infidels.
Crusading ardour had long been extinct, and though Pope Pius II. (Æneas
Sylvius Piccolomini) had in the preceding century tried to form a
coalition against the Turks, and in 1571 Don John of Austria had broken
their naval power at Lepanto, the ardour of the Pope and the navy of the
prince were directed against the Turks, not because they were
unbelievers, but because they were a conquering race and threatened
Western Europe. The expeditions of the Emperor Charles V. against Tunis
in 1535, and Algiers in 1541, were dictated rather by naval and
commercial than by religious considerations, and John III. had acted
with the thorough sanction of the Church, whose most humble devotee he
was, in abandoning the smaller towns held by Portugal in Morocco. Yet
Dom Sebastian persisted; he would be crusader rather than politician,
and he was determined to fight the Mohammedans. His first idea was to go
in person{245} to India and place himself at the head of the Portuguese
forces there; but the minister, Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro, pointed out
the difficulty of finding a regent to govern during his absence, and his
former tutor, Aleixo de Menezes, turned his thoughts to Africa. He was
fired by the fame of his ancestor, Affonso V. “the African,” and
determined to waste what strength still remained to the exhausted
Portuguese nation in useless expeditions to the barren regions of
north-west Africa, where no possible advantage could be obtained of the
slightest value to Portugal. Filled with the notion of recapturing the
useless places which his grandfather had evacuated, such as Alcacer
Seguier, Azamor, Arzila, and Cafim, King Sebastian in his twentieth
year, in 1574, suddenly made up his mind to sail across to Africa. The
expedition partook rather of the nature of a reconnaissance than of a
serious campaign. The king spoke only of a visit to Tangier, and started
off suddenly with his guards and courtiers from a hunting excursion,
ordering the Duke of Aveiro to follow with a force of four hundred
cavalry and one thousand two hundred infantry. With these troops Dom
Sebastian made a few raids, and exhibited his personal courage by
uselessly exposing his person, and he returned more bent than ever on a
great war in Africa, which was to end in the Portuguese conquest of
Morocco, and the acquisition of everlasting fame for its leader as a
brave “soldier of the Cross.”
Before entering on the history of this expedition, which was to end so
disastrously, and strike a last and final blow at the declining power of
Portugal, it{246} would be as well to see how the Portuguese dominion in
Asia had been faring during the regencies of Queen Catherine and the
Cardinal Henry, and during the earlier part of Sebastian’s own tenure of
power. Dom Constantino de Braganza, the friend of the poet Camoens, had
succeeded Francisco Barreto, the enemy of the poet, in 1558, the year
after the death of John III., and had distinguished his viceroyalty by
the capture of Daman. He was a truly great governor, although he
permitted the Inquisition to be established at Goa, and his high rank
gave him an ascendency not possessed by previous viceroys. His conduct
was so blameless and his power so wisely exercised that the queen-regent
begged him to accept the viceroyalty for life. He refused, and at the
end of his three years of office resigned and was succeeded by Dom
Francisco Coutinho, Count of Redondo, a nobleman of high character, who
died in office, and was succeeded first by João de Mendonça, and then by
Dom Antonio de Noronha, who took the important city of Mangalore by
assault. During his viceroyalty in 1565 occurred the battle of Talikot,
in which the powerful Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar, which embraced the
greater part of Southern India was overthrown by the Mohammedan kings of
Ahmadābād, Bīdar, and Bijápur, and the way prepared for the
extension of the Mohammedan power over Southern India. The next viceroy,
Dom Luis de Athaide, was specially selected by King Sebastian himself in
1568, and he certainly justified the choice of the boy-king and his
advisers. The Mohammedan kings of the Deccan were full of delight at
their great victory{247} of Talikot, and Alī Adìl Shah, king of Bijápur,
believed he could expel the Portuguese from his dominions. With this
intention he collected a vast army of one hundred thousand men,
recruited from various adventurers of the Mohammedan religion, and laid
siege to Goa in 1570. The city was being ravaged by a pestilence, but
nevertheless the defence was a gallant one—the last great feat of arms
of the Portuguese in India. The siege lasted ten months, and ended in
the discomfiture of the besiegers and their final defeat in a pitched
battle beneath the walls of Goa, when a victory was won, second only to
that of Dom João de Castro at Diu, twenty-five years before. On his
return to Portugal, Dom Luis de Athaide was received with the greatest
favour by King Sebastian, who created him Count of Atouguia, and also by
the people of Lisbon, who gave him the greatest reception vouchsafed to
any Indian governor on his return for many generations. King Sebastian
then made an important alteration in the government of his Asiatic
possessions. Hitherto all the petty governors from the Cape of Good Hope
to Japan had been subject to the Governor-General or the Viceroy at Goa,
an extent of command which caused many serious inconveniences. In 1571
this vast extent of land and sea was divided into three separate
governorships. The new viceroy, Dom Antonio de Noronha, was to be
supreme from Cape Guardafui to Ceylon with his capital at Goa, while
Francisco Barreto was to govern the south-east coast of Africa with his
headquarters at Mozambique, and Antonio Moniz Barreto was to rule from
Pegu to{248} China with his capital at Malacca. Antonio Moniz Barreto
succeeded as viceroy in 1573, and Dom Diogo de Menezes in 1576; and in
1578, the very year in which King Sebastian met his fate, his faithful
servant, Dom Luis de Athaide, became viceroy for the second time, and it
is said that the defeat of his sovereign broke the heart of the defender
of Goa and caused his untimely death.
The expedition which was to meet with such a disastrous termination had
long been contemplated by Sebastian, but its despatch was hastened by
the state of affairs in Morocco itself, which seemed to the king most
propitious for the success of his enterprise. The empire of Morocco had
been divided between two brother Sherīfs, as the rulers of that
country were termed, in the early part of the sixteenth century. The
younger of the brothers, Maulā[20] Mohammed, beheaded his senior,
Maulā Ahmed, and was in his turn assassinated in 1556. The successor
to the throne, Maulā Abdallah, murdered two of his brothers and was
succeeded by his illegitimate son, Maulā Ahmed ibn Abdallah, the
“Muly Hamet” of old English writers. At this, the brother of the late
Maulā Abdallah, Abd-el-Melik, commonly known as Muley Moloch, fled to
Constantinople and, with the help of the Turks, ousted his nephew,
Maulā Ahmed. The defeated usurper then decided to make an application
for Christian help, and when refused asylum by Philip II., of Spain, he
appealed to Dom Sebastian.{249} This was the opportunity the young king had
longed for, and when Maulā Ahmed promised to hold the crown of
Morocco as a vassal of the King of Portugal, Sebastian enthusiastically
welcomed him and promised him assistance. The wiser statesmen of
Portugal pointed out that the strength of Portugal in men and arms was
in Asia, and that it was impossible to attempt such an enterprise as the
invasion of Morocco without foreign help. Sebastian therefore sent
embassies asking for help from the Pope, and from his uncle, Philip II.
of Spain. Pope Gregory XIII. sent him an arrow of S. Sebastian and
nothing else, but the arrangements with Philip II. were more important.
The minister Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro was sent in person to the King
of Spain to ask for troops and ships, in recognition of which Dom
Sebastian would marry a Spanish infanta. Philip opposed the project
strongly, but eventually promised five thousand men and fifty galleys to
assist in an attack on Larache (El Araish), an offer which he afterwards
withdrew, when the Duke of Alva assured him that at least fifteen
thousand veteran soldiers would be necessary. In December, 1576,
Sebastian had an interview in person with his uncle, when Philip II.
again opposed his nephew’s mad idea, and he is reported to have said
when his efforts proved in vain, “If he win, we shall have a good
son-in-law; if he lose, a good kingdom.”
VIEW UP THE DOURO TOWARDS OPORTO. (After a drawing by J.
Gibbs of Bath.)
Dom Sebastian then decided to have all the glory of conquering Morocco
for himself, and his hopes reached their height when Maulā Ahmed
managed to buy over the Kaid of Arzila and handed over that place, one
of those surrendered by John III., to the{251}{250} Portuguese monarch. Maulā
Abd-el-Melik, who was in bad health, tried to dissuade his rash opponent
from attacking him, and in a letter pointed out that he was the rightful
Sherīf of Morocco. He even went further, and offered to the young
king a district of ten miles round each of the Portuguese
towns—Tangier, Ceuta, Mazagon and Arzila—if he would give up
supporting the usurper. Never might the hackneyed line of Horace be
quoted with more justice than in regard to the rash young Christian
monarch:
“Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.”
No amount of opposition could check the king’s ardour; he believed
himself already surpassing in glory both John “the Great” and Affonso
“the African,” and proceeded to raise money in every possible way. The
treasury was nearly empty owing to peculation and bad management, and it
was filled by imposing new taxes, by further harrying the converted
Jews, and by partial bankruptcy. As the country was nearly drained of
men the king had to hire mercenaries belonging to different nations, who
were not properly equipped, and he never seemed to realize the
difference between an expedition to take a sea-side town and the
invasion of a powerful empire. If Affonso V. had met with difficulty in
taking Tangier, how could Sebastian hope to penetrate to Fez, seventy
miles up the country? Dom Sebastian trusted too much to the promised
help of Maulā Ahmed; he believed other cities would yield as quickly
as Arzila; and he had been thoroughly convinced by the expelled usurper
that his uncle Maulā Abd-el-Melik{252} was not only hated in Morocco, but
enfeebled by illness; and that his offers of peace were dictated by
fear.
The preparations made for the campaign were ridiculous in the extreme;
all the most experienced generals and most tried Portuguese soldiers
were in India, and the Portuguese troops who were enlisted consisted of
a few old veterans whose time had expired in Asia, and of youthful raw
recruits. These latter were not in the least disciplined, and were
officered by young courtiers, who may have been brave, and were
certainly inexperienced. The king himself intended to take the command
in person, and instead of making plans for the conduct of the campaign
and looking after his troops, he spent his time in borrowing the sword
of King Affonso Henriques from the convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, and
in having a banner worked in which the arms of Portugal were for the
first time surmounted by an imperial crown. This banner was solemnly
blessed by the archbishop in the cathedral of Lisbon on the 14th of
June, and the king then considered that all was ready.
On the 24th of June, 1578, King Sebastian set sail with a fleet of fifty
ships of war and about nine hundred transports under the command of the
Admiral of Portugal, Dom Diogo de Sousa, carrying fifteen thousand
infantry, two thousand four hundred cavalry, and thirty-six guns. Of
this army only about ten thousand were Portuguese, the rest consisting
of Spanish and German volunteers and mercenaries, and of nine hundred
Italians, under the command of a gallant Englishman, Sir Thomas
Stukeley. This well-known English Catholic, who had been created Marquis
of{253} Leinster by the Pope, had been stopped with his soldiers by
Sebastian while on his way to raise an insurrection in Ireland against
Elizabeth. In spite of the desperate hurry in which he had been to
start, Sebastian made no attempt to hasten his passage and try the
effects of a surprise. He first stopped at Lagos in the Algarves, then
at Cadiz, where he was sumptuously entertained by the Duke of Medina
Sidonia, and did not reach Tangier until July 6th. He was there met by
his Mohammedan ally, Maulā Ahmed, who handed over his son as a
hostage, but who only brought eight hundred Moors instead of the army
which he had promised. Sebastian at first amused himself with hunting,
while his opponent was concentrating his forces, and then repulsed a few
Moors in a skirmish, which he magnified into a victory. From Tangier he
suddenly carried his army to Arzila, where he encamped beneath the walls
and wasted time. At last he determined to hold a council of war to
decide in what way the army should attack Larache; Maulā Ahmed wisely
suggested by sea, so as to have the advantage of a convenient means of
retreat to the ships, but Sebastian answered the Moorish prince so
rudely that he left the council, and the king decided to march by land.
Even at this last moment Maulā Abd-el-Melik offered to cede Larache
to Sebastian if he would cease his military operations, but the rash
young king returned no answer whatever, and the Sherīf of Morocco,
finding all his efforts for peace repulsed, determined to crush the
invader.
On the 29th of July the march inland, away from{254} the cool breezes off
the sea, was commenced under the burning sky of an African summer; the
soldiers were soon maddened by hunger, thirst, and heat, and by the
incessant attacks of the Moorish skirmishers; and the army was
dispirited before a battle took place. These miseries continued for five
days, until August 3rd, when the Portuguese had some success in a
skirmish, and Dom Sebastian took up what he considered a strong position
near the little town of Alcacer Quibir, or more correctly El-Kasr
el-Kebīr. The position was from a military point of view utterly
indefensible, for both flanks were exposed, and Maulā Abd-el-Melik,
who was now face to face with the Christians with an army of forty
thousand cavalry and fifteen thousand infantry saw that the Portuguese
king was lost. At daybreak on the 4th of August, 1578, the battle
commenced with some brilliant charges on the part of the Portuguese, but
in a short time the wings of the Moorish army, which were entirely
composed of cavalry, overlapped the small Christian army, and for four
hours the army of Dom Sebastian was compelled to defend itself. The
result of the continued charges of the Moorish cavalry could not be
doubtful, and at the end of the four hours’ fighting nearly the whole of
the Christian army was cut to pieces. The Moorish monarch, Maulā
Abd-el-Melik, had been in the agonies of death when the battle
commenced, and died in his litter from the exertion of trying to mount
his horse at the first charge of the Christians, placing his finger on
his lip as a sign that his death should be kept secret for a time. His
rival, Maulā Ahmed, was{255} drowned in crossing the Wed or Wady
M’Hassan, and his brother, Ahmed ibn Mohammed, was declared king by the
soldiers at the conclusion of the battle. The slaughter was terrible;
more than nine thousand Christians were killed, and all the rest, except
about fifty, were taken prisoners. Sir Thomas Stukeley, after gallantly
defending himself, was killed, with many of the chief Portuguese nobles
and prelates, including Dom Jaymé, brother of the sixth Duke of
Braganza, the Duke of Aveiro, who had commanded the cavalry, and the
bishops of Coimbra and Oporto, while among the prisoners were the Duke
of Barcellos and Dom Duarte de Menezes, Quarter-Master-General of the
army.
Dom Sebastian throughout the battle behaved himself as a gallant knight,
though he had not been a prudent general, and when the fortunes of the
day went against him he determined to lose his life also. Many accounts
are given of his death. One tradition says that he was taken prisoner by
some Moors, who stripped him of his arms, and began to quarrel about
him, and that a Mohammedan general rode in amongst them, and shouting
out, “What, you dogs, when God has given you so glorious a victory,
would you cut each other’s throats about a prisoner,” immediately struck
the King of Portugal down in ignorance of his rank. Another story is
that the king met Dom Luis de Brito with the consecrated banner wrapped
around him, and said, “Hold it fast, let us die upon it;” and that when,
after fierce fighting, Brito was taken prisoner with the banner, he saw
the king riding away unpursued. Dom Luis de Lima also asserted{256} that he
saw the king making his way towards the river unhurt. According to the
most trustworthy account, Christovão de Tavora, the king’s equerry,
showed a flag of truce, and offered to surrender with the fifty
horsemen, who still remained about the king, when Sebastian suddenly
dashed on the Moorish cavalry, who, irritated at this breach of faith,
instantly slew him, as well as the brave equerry, who followed his
master. Anyhow, it is certain that the new Sherīf Ahmed ibn Mohammed
sent out Sebastião de Resende, a gentleman of the bedchamber, to
discover the corpse of the king, and that a naked body was brought in
covered with wounds, which the Portuguese prisoners at once recognized
as that of the ill-fated Dom Sebastian. The body was temporarily buried
in the palace at Alcacer Quibir, and removed in the following September
to Ceuta, at the request of Cardinal Henry. It was eventually taken to
Portugal in 1582, by the orders of Philip II., and buried with great
pomp in the church of St. Jerome at Belem.
It is important to lay stress on this subject, because for many years
the lower classes of the Portuguese people refused to believe that their
sovereign was dead, a belief encouraged by the stratagem of a wounded
noble on the evening of the fatal battle to gain admission into the city
of Tangier by asserting that he was the king. It was this belief which
led to the acceptance of the successive false Dom Sebastians, who played
a part in the ensuing half century, and it had a still further influence
upon the whole future of the Portuguese people. That the “Principe
Encuberto” or{257} Hidden Prince would appear again became a religion, and
the sect of the Sebastianistas became a powerful body of fanatics. Their
belief was fostered by the princes of the House of Braganza as
patriotic, and whenever Portugal has been subject to a great strain, the
Sebastianistas have always come to the front. Even at the present day
they are not extinct, and Sir Richard Burton asserts that he has met
with them in the interior of Brazil. It was this firm belief that gave
point to the remark of Lord Tyrawley, in the English House of Lords in
1763: “What can one possibly do with a nation, one half of which expect
the Messiah, and the other half their king, Dom Sebastian, who has been
dead two hundred years?”
The news of the terrible disaster of Alcacer Quibir was brought to
Lisbon by the Admiral Dom Diogo de Sousa, and occasioned the most
passionate lamentation. There was not a noble family which had not lost
more than one of its representatives, not a patriot who failed to see
that ruin was staring his country in the face. Deprived of soldiers,
resources, and reputation at one fell blow, the Portuguese nation seemed
stunned at the extent of its calamity. Even in India the same alarm was
felt, and it is said that the brave Viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, died
of a broken heart at the news. The Cardinal Henry was solemnly crowned
king, but he was a feeble old man of sixty-six, who had to be fed like a
baby, and he was quite incapable of facing the situation. He utterly
refused to acknowledge any successor, or to express any opinion on the
subject, and when he died on January 31, 1580, the Cortes which had been
summoned to decide{258} this important question was still sitting at Lisbon.
With him ended for a time the separate existence of the Portuguese
nation, and it is significant and interesting to observe that Camoens,
the great national poet of Portugal, the poet who had immortalized its
heroic epoch, died in a hospital of semi-starvation a few months before
or after the Cardinal-king. It was well he did not live longer, for
Portugal was to enter on the period of its “Sixty-Years’ Captivity,” and
her proud sons, who had the patriotism of a Camoens in their hearts,
would not have been able to bear the burden of subjection to a foreign
king.
{259}
XII.
PORTUGUESE LITERATURE—CAMOENS.
IT has always been the case in the history of a nation which can boast
of a golden age, that the epoch of its greatest glory is that in which
its literature chiefly flourished. The energies of a nation at its
zenith cannot be bounded by the vastest schemes of conquest, but develop
in other directions as well. It was so with Portugal. The age which
witnessed the careers of its famous captains and conquerors was also the
age of its greatest poets and prose writers. The establishment of the
Inquisition soon checked the progress of Portuguese literature, but
before its fatal power had time to thoroughly stifle free thought, and
before the disaster of Alcacer Quibir, and the annexation of the country
by Philip II. of Spain, Portugal had been able to produce many great
writers, and one of the most supremely-gifted poets the world has ever
seen, Luis de Camoens.
The affection which the first princes of the house of Aviz had felt for
literature, and especially for purely national literature, has been
alluded to, and the natural result is to be seen in the works of the{260}
early poets, and of the eloquent chroniclers of the fifteenth century.
The honour given by these princes to literary endeavour heightened its
importance in the eyes of the people, and raised the whole standard of
education. The Portuguese were therefore prepared to take advantage of
the stores of knowledge revealed by the revival of classical learning,
and to profit greatly by it. Ayres Barbosa, a native of Aveiro, was the
first to introduce the study of ancient Greek into the peninsula; he had
listened to the lectures of Politian and his contemporaries at Florence,
and after teaching “the humanities” at the University of Salamanca for
about twenty years from 1495, he returned to Portugal as tutor to the
younger sons of King Emmanuel. His most distinguished Portuguese pupil
was, however, Andrea de Resende, the antiquary, who was one of the
professors at the University of Coimbra, during the epoch of its
greatest reputation, and is well known as the friend and correspondent
of Erasmus.
This university,[21] at which the most famous authors and statesmen of
Portugal received their education, deserves some slight notice here. A
university was founded by King Diniz at Lisbon in 1300, but the
turbulence of the students, and their perpetual quarrels with the
citizens, caused him to remove it to Coimbra, about the year 1308.
During the fourteenth century the habitat of the Portuguese university
was moved from Coimbra to Lisbon in 1338, from Lisbon to Coimbra in
1354, and from Coimbra back to Lisbon{261} in 1377. John “the Great” paid
great attention to the university, as he did to every valuable
institution in the kingdom; and in 1400 he entirely remodelled it,
establishing a staff of fourteen regius professors, four of whom were to
teach grammar, three Roman law, three canon law, two logic, one
medicine, and one theology. On this footing the Portuguese university
remained until 1537, when John III., perceiving that the busy pursuits
of a noisy capital were hardly suited to quiet study and the acquisition
of learning, removed it finally to the beautiful city of Coimbra, and
once more changed its constitution. In 1547 the king summoned Andrea
Govea back to his native land, and requested him to bring with him other
men of learning. Andrea Govea and his brothers were famous as scholars
throughout Europe, even in the days which could boast of Scaliger; they
were all natives of Beja, and had been educated at Paris; Martial Govea,
the eldest, wrote one of the earliest Latin grammars, published at Paris
in 1534; Antonio Govea argued the cause of Aristotle against Ramus,
edited Virgil and Terence, and was held to be the most formidable rival
of Cujas as an exponent of Roman law; while Andrea had been principal of
the College of St. Barbe, rector of the University of Paris, and
afterwards principal of the College of Guienne at Bordeaux, and was
termed by Montaigne, “le plus grand principal de France.”[22] Andrea
Govea brought with him to Coimbra, as requested, many of his friends and
colleagues, including George Buchanan, the greatest scholar Scotland has
ever produced,{262} Patrick Buchanan, his elder brother, Arnoldus Fabricius
and Elias Vinetus, learned Frenchmen, and his own countrymen, Diogo de
Tieve, João da Costa, and Antonio Mendes. This brilliant band did not,
however, long remain united, for Andrea Govea died in 1548, and his
death was followed by the persecution of George Buchanan by the
Inquisition. The illustrious scholar was accused of eating flesh in
Lent, and of writing a poem against the Franciscans, and after being
imprisoned in a convent he was only too glad to escape from the
inhospitable country. Though the death of Govea, and the persecution of
Buchanan, deprived the remodelled university of its most famous
teachers, there yet remained a sufficient number with such coadjutors as
Jeronymo Osorio, Bishop of Silves, Andrea de Resende, and Pedro Nunes,
the mathematician, to make this the golden age of the University of
Coimbra; and the instruction they imparted profoundly impressed the
minds of their most promising young Portuguese pupils, such as Ferreira
and Camoens.
The result of the introduction of a knowledge of the masterpieces of
classical literature was bound to have a great effect upon the
development of Portuguese poetry and prose, but before noticing the
result of that influence in the works of the “classicists,” headed by Sá
de Miranda and Ferreira, and in the epic of Camoens, it is necessary to
devote a little space to the life and works of the greatest Portuguese
dramatist, Gil Vicente. The versatility of the Portuguese people during
the heroic period is in no way better illustrated than by the fact that
in their country{263} appeared the first modern dramatist, nearly a century
before Shakespeare or Calderon. The date of Gil Vicente’s birth is
unknown, but it is said that he came of a good family, and he is first
found attached to the Court of Emmanuel as a dramatic author. He began
by writing “autos” or religious pieces, resembling in their nature the
miracle plays common all over Europe at the time, and the first, which
attracted King Emmanuel’s attention, was written to celebrate the birth
of his eldest son, afterwards John III. Most of them are Christmas
pieces, and the dramatist took advantage of the story of the shepherds
watching their flocks by night, to introduce the elements of what may be
called pastoral comedy. Far more important are his comedies and farces,
which latter won for him the title of the Portuguese Plautus. Neither
the plots nor the language of these productions are very refined, but
they are full of dramatic vigour, and represent the life of the lower
classes in Lisbon, with a vividness which strikingly recalls the works
of his Roman prototype. Gil Vicente died at Evora in 1557, the same year
as his patron, John III., who, in his younger days, did not disdain to
act in his favourite’s dramas, and he has had no successor as a comic
writer worthy to be named beside him, which proves once again, how
thoroughly with the extinction of the national greatness, the
originality of the Portuguese people in every direction disappeared.
Side by side with Gil Vicente must be mentioned Bernardim Ribeiro, the
founder of the most national school of Portuguese poetry, that of the
romantic-pastoral type. Though he showed the influence of{264} the revival
of classical learning in his style, he did not show it in his ideas, and
the shepherds who converse in his eclogues, are as thoroughly Portuguese
as those who appear in Gil Vicente’s Christmas “autos.” Ribeiro, like
Gil Vicente, was a favourite at the Court of King Emmanuel, where he
held the office of “Gentleman of the Chamber,” and it is said that the
lady for whom he cherished a hopeless affection was the Donna Beatrice,
daughter of the king. A modern writer on Portuguese literature, speaking
of Ribeiro and his works, says: “The rivers and mountains of his native
land are the natural framework of a poet’s fancy, and the revival of
classical learning showed him in the Eclogues of Virgil a model, which
he was not slow to imitate. His Eclogues, written in ‘redondilhas’
(octosyllabic nine or ten-lined stanzas), are the earliest in modern
Europe, and while replete with the charms and conceits of versification
of the troubadours, show a truly poetic love of nature.”[23] Ribeiro was
the first true Portuguese poet, as Gil Vicente was the first Portuguese
dramatist. While coming under the influence of the classical writers of
Greece and Rome, he was not a slavish imitator of their master-pieces,
and as the founder of the school of pastoral poetry, he holds an
honourable place in the Portuguese literature of the heroic age.
Ribeiro exhibits in his poetry the influence of the revival of classical
learning to a slight degree; after his time that influence increased,
and his successors, who bridged over the chasm between Ribeiro and{265}
Camoens, were thorough classicists, who imitated the Greek and Roman
poets, not only in form, but in spirit. The chief poets of this
classicist group were Sá de Miranda and Ferreira. Francisco Sá de
Miranda was born at Coimbra, the Portuguese Oxford, in 1495, of a noble
family, and he became professor of jurisprudence in his native town. On
the death of his parents, he resigned his professorship, and travelled
in Italy, where he studied the works not only of the great classical
authors, but of the new school of Italian poets. He returned to his
native country with a great reputation, and received an appointment at
the Court of John III. He proved an accomplished courtier, but a quarrel
with a Portuguese nobleman forced him to abandon his office, and he
retired to his country seat at Tapada, near Ponte de Lima, where he died
in 1558, while Camoens was still fighting in India. It was in Italy and
not in Coimbra, that he learnt to study the great classical poets, and
reverencing their works with the almost superstitious admiration of the
Italians of the Renaissance, he dared not treat their ideas with the
freedom of either Ribeiro or Camoens. Sá de Miranda devoted himself to
the task of polishing the Portuguese language, and in doing this, he did
more harm than good, for he introduced many Latin and Spanish forms of
expression, which were not needed, and which helped to hinder the
natural development of the national literature. He openly expressed his
opinion that Spanish was a more dignified language than Portuguese, and
many of his best poems are written in the former tongue, and are
considered by{266} authorities on Spanish literature to be excellent
specimens of sixteenth-century work. Sá de Miranda’s poems comprise
imitations of many poets. He wrote eclogues in the style of Theocritus,
epistles on the lines of those of Horace, plays based on Terence, and
sonnets of which the form was borrowed from the Italian writers of the
Renaissance. All are good and interesting in their way, but all are
imitations, and the very best imitations of foreign styles can hardly
rank a poet among the glories of his country’s literature. Sá de
Miranda’s right to be included in any work on Portuguese literature is
not due to the poems he wrote, or to his questionable improvements in
his native language, but to the fact that he familiarized the people
with the classic forms of poetry, of which a greater than he was to take
advantage. Yet Sá de Miranda held a very high place in the estimation of
his contemporaries, and the writers of the next century did not hesitate
to rank him above Camoens, as being more “correct,” a criticism, which
irresistibly recalls Voltaire’s avowed preference of Pope over
Shakespeare.
Antonio Ferreira, the second leader of the Portuguese classicist school,
was like Sá de Miranda, a slavish adherent to classical forms, but he
was at the same time a genuine patriot and a lover of his country, and a
student of its past history. He, like Sá de Miranda, was of a noble
family, and he was born at Lisbon in 1528. He was sent to the University
of Coimbra, and studied there in the days of its greatness. His
favourite teacher was Diogo de Tieve, the friend of George Buchanan, and
professor{267} of classical literature, from whom he obtained a knowledge of
the classics, not inferior to that possessed by Sá de Miranda. Even in
his youth, Ferreira determined to devote his poetical talent to works in
his own language, and he refused to write Latin or Spanish verses. He
formed round him at Coimbra, a school of young poets, of whom the chief
were Andrade Caminha, Jeronymo Corte-Real, and Diogo Bernardes; and in
1557 he published his first volume of poems. This book established his
fame, and on coming to Lisbon, he was appointed a judge of the Court of
Appeal, and a gentleman of the Royal Household. He continued to write
and publish until his death from the plague in 1569, the year before
Camoens returned from India. Ferreira, like Sá de Miranda, was an
imitator of the great classical poets, but he differed from his
predecessor, in that he combined with this predilection, an appreciation
of the national greatness. He wrote sonnets after the manner of
Petrarch, elegies after Ariosto, eclogues after Virgil, and odes and
epistles after Horace; but his greatest work was a drama founded on the
model of the ancient Greek tragedies. He selected for his subject the
touching story of Ines de Castro, and the characters in his play are
Ines and her nurse, Dom Pedro and his secretary, King Affonso and his
three counsellors, a messenger, and a chorus of women of Coimbra.
Ferreira’s tragedy, though more fit for the study than the stage,
remains to this day the finest drama in the Portuguese language, and
stands almost as far as above other dramatic attempts of subsequent
ages, as Camoens’s great epic towers above all imitations.{268}
The history of the development of the revival of learning, as
illustrated by the classicist school of Sá de Miranda and Ferreira, is
of great importance to the right understanding of the course of
Portuguese literature, but to the world at large its chief interest lies
in its share in forming the taste of the one man, whom Portugal has
contributed to the small roll of supreme poets, Camoens. His name is
more famous than that of any other Portuguese, whether king or captain;
his great epic has been translated into every civilized European
language, and is a greater subject of pride to his countrymen than their
conquests in the East; and no “Story of Portugal” could be complete
which did not give some account of the poet who has given immortal fame
to the heroic deeds of the great age of Portugal.
LUIS DE CAMOENS.
(From the Portrait in “Portugal Illustrated,” 1829.)
Luis de Camoes, commonly called in English Camoens, was the son of a
captain in the Portuguese navy, who had more than once experienced the
perils of the voyage to India, and he was born at Lisbon in either 1524
or 1525. His family was noble, but by no means among the first rank of
the Portuguese nobility in wealth or importance. He was educated at the
University of Coimbra, before it had been revivified by the energy and
learning of Govea and his friends, and there acquired a profound
knowledge of the Latin poets, and of the symbolism and the legends of
the Greek and Latin mythology. He seems to have left the university,
which he ever dearly loved, before the arrival of Diogo de Tieve, and
the foundation of what may be called the national-classicist school of
poetry by Ferreira, and{270}{269} went to Lisbon to obtain employment. His
poetical powers soon became manifest, and he had become somewhat of a
favourite, when he fell in love with a great lady of the Court, said to
be the Donna Catherine de Athaide, lady of honour to the queen. The
lady’s friends were indignant at the poet’s suit, and at their request
he was exiled to the little town of Ceuta, on the coast of Morocco,
where he lost his right eye in a skirmish with the Moors. Wearied of
this life he volunteered for India, the goal of every gallant Portuguese
gentleman, and after serving a term in prison for a street brawl in
Lisbon, he set sail for the East in 1553. In Asia, Camoens remained for
more than sixteen years, and it was there that he gathered the local
knowledge which gives truth and charm to many passages of his immortal
poem. In 1554 he served in the Red Sea and at the capture of Muscat
under Dom Fernando de Menezes, and soon after his return to Goa he was
ordered to take up a lucrative appointment at Macao, in 1556. Here he
remained for two years, and the chief glory of the little island off
Canton is the cave where he is supposed to have worked on his epic, and
which is still known as the “Grotto of Camoens.” From Macao he was
recalled in 1558, when in spite of his poverty he was thrown into gaol
at Goa for peculation, and he was not released until the arrival of an
old court acquaintance, Dom Constantino de Braganza, as Viceroy of
India. With this prince, he served at the capture of Daman, and he
distinguished himself in various engagements under the next
governor-general, the Count of Redondo. In 1568{271} Camoens determined to
return to Portugal with his great poem for his only fortune, but on his
way, disaster again overtook him, and in 1569 he was thrown into an
African prison for debt, by Pedro Barreto, Governor of Mozambique. From
this cruel confinement, he was released by some old friends on their way
from India, who paid the debt, and in 1570 he once more found himself in
Lisbon. His reception in his native land was not encouraging; he was not
received at Court; he had made no money in India, and had only shown a
peculiar faculty for getting into debt and making enemies; and he now
devoted himself to the final recension of his “Lusiads.” The first
edition of the great poem was published in 1572, but the fame it at once
acquired did little good to the author, who was only granted a pension
of £3 8s. 0d. a year, equivalent perhaps to £20 in modern money. The
later years of Camoens were utterly miserable; poor and neglected, the
arch-poet of Portugal had to subsist upon what his Javan slave could beg
for him at night in the streets of Lisbon. He lived long enough to hear
of the disaster of Alcacer Quibir, and of the death of Dom Sebastian,
but he was spared the pain of seeing the Spaniards ruling over the
fatherland whose glories he had sung, for he died in a common hospital
at Lisbon in June, 1579, or June, 1580.
These are the chief incidents in the life of one of the world’s greatest
poets, and they tell their own tragic story without need of a
commentary. It serves no good purpose to speculate why Camoens was ever
in debt and making enemies, or why he was neglected{272} and left to die in
poverty; other poets and men of letters have shared the same lot. It
remains rather to examine the causes which make his epic take rank among
the works which the unanimous opinion of posterity has decreed to be
immortal. Of his sonnets, eclogues, and smaller poems, beautiful as many
of them are, there is no need to speak, for it is on his “Lusiads” that
the fame of Camoens must ever rest. The subject of the epic is Vasco da
Gama’s first voyage to India and his return, an achievement of such
surpassing difficulty, and of such importance alike to Portugal and to
Europe, that Camoens perceived its fitness for poetical treatment. But
the poem is not confined to the narration of the perils of the voyage
only: it abounds in long episodes, in one of which Vasco da Gama relates
the history of the Portuguese people to the king of Melinda, while in
another a nymph gives a prophetic history to the great admiral of the
achievements of his country-men in the land he had just visited. Sir
Robert Walpole is said to have declared that he derived his knowledge of
English history from Shakespeare’s historical plays, and it might be
affirmed in the same sense that many, if not most, educated people have
learned what they know of Portuguese history from the “Lusiads.” Such a
knowledge is not to be despised. For, if the poet makes the mistakes of
his era, and, for instance, identifies the modern Portuguese with the
ancient Lusitanians, he manages in a few stanzas apiece to sum up with
dramatic genius all the famous tales of Portuguese history, such as the
voluntary surrender of Egas Moniz, the pathetic story of Ines de Castro,
and{273} the glories of the victory of Aljubarrota. This power of historical
description is of itself enough to make Camoens the national poet of
Portugal; every old Portuguese family finds its name enshrined in some
of its glowing passages, and the whole Portuguese people feel identified
with the actors in the great deeds it describes. But Camoens is not only
a national poet; he is a hero telling of an heroic deed done by an
heroic people, and this secures for him the interest of readers of all
nations, who can appreciate true heroism. Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese
sailor, but the results of his enterprise and success were to the
advantage of all Europe, and the poet who sings of him deserved to be
heard by Europe. If, then, the subject was fitted for epic poetry, the
style of Camoens was equal to it. He rises far above the purely
classicist school in Portuguese literature; he uses the names of the
Roman gods, and narrates their councils and their intervention in
mundane affairs with the verisimilitude of Virgil, yet he never falls
into a base or servile imitation of the great Latin poet, but preserves
throughout the cast of thought of a Portuguese “conquistador.” To
criticize the “Lusiads” further is without the purpose of this book, but
in conclusion it must be pointed out that the great poem remains the
strongest bond of union between the modern Portuguese people, whether in
Portugal itself, or in Brazil, Goa, Macao, and Mozambique. It is
impossible to meet an educated Portuguese, who does not know his
Camoens; he is more to them than Dante to the Italians, Goethe to the
Germans, or Shakespeare to the English; he sings of{274} their nation’s
glory, and in maintaining his fame, each one of them is interested.
Never was this more manifest than in the Camoens Celebration of 1880,
when Portuguese-speaking people of all climes, and of all varieties of
political and religious opinion, gathered together in Lisbon to do
honour to the memory of their great poet, whose glory they felt to be a
connecting link between them all.
JOÃO DE BARROS.
(From a Print in the British Museum.)
It was not only in the domain of poetry that the boundless energies of
the Portuguese of the heroic age distinguished themselves; in prose
composition, also, they stood high above their contemporaries of other
nations. History, as might be expected, was their chief study, and João
de Barros, the Portuguese Livy, was the writer who bridged over the gap
between the old chroniclers, of whom Damião de Goes was the last, and
the regular historians. This young nobleman, who was born in 1496, was
distinguished at the Portuguese Court by his ardent study of the Latin
historical writers, and especially of Livy, and was commissioned by King
Emmanuel to draw up an account of the discoveries and conquests of the
Portuguese in the East. John III. continued the royal patronage to João
de Barros, who received many lucrative appointments, such as
Captain-general of Brazil and treasurer of the Indian department at
Lisbon. The latter post gave him the opportunity to collect valuable
information on his subject, and he made good use of it. His “Asia” is
written in exact imitation of the style of Livy; it is divided into
decads and abounds in speeches which might have been, but certainly
never were, delivered, and in{276}{275} curious theories, entirely without
foundation. Nevertheless, João de Barros possesses the greatest quality
of an historian, for he took pains in trying to ascertain the truth, and
when he believed he had found it, he told his story simply and directly.
He combines the naïve simplicity of the early chroniclers with the art
of making a story interesting, and he deserves a niche in the history of
Portuguese literature as the first writer of modern Portuguese prose. In
fiction the “Amadis de Gaul” type of romance was followed by imitations
of the “Palmeirim de Inghilterra;” both are alike tedious and absurd,
and thoroughly deserve the hearty mockery of Cervantes, who laughed them
and their school out of existence. Far more interesting, if also
somewhat tedious, are the pastoral novels, which were originated by the
poet Bernardim Ribeiro, and written with most success by Rodrigues Lobo,
for they are truly national, and exhibit the love of nature, which is
inherent in the Portuguese character.
Nor was more serious literary work neglected by the universally cultured
Portuguese of the heroic age. Mention has been made of the great
scholars, who made the University of Coimbra renowned, and who
encouraged the study of the classics. Theological inquiry was also much
favoured, and Francisco Ferrario, one of the divines at the Council of
Trent, and Jeronymo de Azambuja, a learned Hebrew scholar, who wrote a
commentary on the Bible, both held a high place in the estimation of
their contemporaries. Among grammarians, the name of Manuel Alvares, a
Jesuit, is honourably remembered, while scientific research was
represented by the mathematician,{277} Pedro Nunes, who was reckoned one of
the wonders of his age. Lastly, Andrea de Resende, the greatest
Portuguese antiquary, must be again noticed, for his “De Antiquitatibus
Lusitaniæ” is a work of exceptional value, and contains a transcription
of many Roman inscriptions, since destroyed.
Enough has been said to indicate how great and varied was the literary
activity of the Portuguese during their golden age, and it is worthy of
notice, that their literature was most abundant in great works at the
very time in which their energies were most strained by their Asiatic
conquests. It is matter for wonder, that one small nation could do so
much, and in the “Lusiads” the key-note of their success is to be found.
The Portuguese race, trained under great kings and great captains,
believed itself to be invincible, and from that very belief it remained
invincible for a time. When the illusion was shattered, the
superabundant energy which it had fostered vanished completely. When
once a nation has been conquered, and its belief in its invincibility is
gone, its power withers away. The greatness of a nation depends upon the
opinion its people have of themselves as individuals and members of the
body politic; as long as they believe in themselves they can do
anything; when their faith in their invincibility disappears, their
position among nations speedily declines.{278}
XIII.
THE SIXTY YEARS’ CAPTIVITY.
THE death of the Cardinal-King Henry brought the people of Portugal face
to face with the problem which all had been discussing ever since the
melancholy fate of Dom Sebastian. There were seven candidates for the
throne, but only five of them need be seriously considered, for the
claims of Pope Gregory XIII., as heir-general to a cardinal, and of
Catherine de’ Medici, through the first marriage of Affonso III. to the
Countess of Boulogne in the thirteenth century, need no further notice.
The relationship of the other five claimants to Emmanuel “the Fortunate”
can be best perceived from the table on the opposite page. From this
table it clearly appears that the true heiress to the throne was
Catherine, Duchess of Braganza, and failing her heirs, the Duke of
Parma; and that the claims of Philip II. of Spain and of the Duke of
Savoy were only legally valid in case of the extinction of the
descendants of Dom Duarte or Edward, Duke of Guimaraens. The University
of Coimbra, after due consideration, declared in favour of the Duchess
of{279} Braganza, but Philip II. of Spain cared little for this opinion; he
had long hoped to sit upon the throne of Portugal, and to rule over the
whole Iberian peninsula, and he wished still more to add the profits of
the Portuguese trade with Asia to his own American revenues, and thus
fill his exchequer with the sinews of war for his struggle against the
Protestants of the north of Europe. Philip II. therefore set to work to
win over the majority of the Cortes which had been convened at Lisbon,
to settle the succession to the throne. Money and lavish promises
assisted the eloquence of the two chief supporters of the King of Spain,
Christovão de Moura and Antonio Pinheiro, Bishop of Leiria; and when the
death of the cardinal-king was announced in January, 1580, the Cortes
was quite ready to recognize Philip as king, although the people, or
rather that small section of the people who were Portuguese patriots,
felt and expressed all the traditional hatred against the union of the
thrones of Spain and Portugal.
TABLE II. The Descendants of Emmanuel.
{280}
The death of King Henry hurried on matters, and Philip, in order to
establish himself peacefully on the throne, entered into negotiations
with the Duke of Braganza. The King of Spain solemnly promised the duke
that he should have Brazil in full sovereignty with the title of king,
and that a marriage should be arranged between his daughter and the
Prince of the Asturias, heir to the conjoined thrones; and the duke, who
hated war and loved peace, accepted these terms, in spite of his wife’s
opposition. But, to the surprise of Philip, another competitor for the{281}
crown, to whom he had paid no attention—Dom Antonio, the Prior of
Crato—declared himself king at Santarem, and, entering Lisbon without
opposition, struck money and began to raise soldiers. This Dom Antonio
was the son of Dom Luis, Duke of Beja, the second son of Emmanuel “the
Fortunate,” by Violante de Gomes, surnamed “the Pelican,” one of the
most beautiful women of her time. Dom Antonio alleged that his father
was secretly married to his mother, and reminded the people, in a
proclamation, that, even if the marriage were not legal, one of the
greatest of all the kings of Portugal, the victor of Aljubarrota, was a
bastard also. But the Portugal of the close of the sixteenth century,
enervated by wealth and luxury, oppressed by the Inquisition, and with
its free population reduced in numbers, possessed none of the energy of
the Portugal of the fourteenth century, and felt no inclination to fight
against the King of Spain, the son of the great Emperor Charles V., and
the uncle and friend of their lamented monarch, Dom Sebastian. The
brave, but hot-headed and noisy Prior of Crato could not be compared in
warlike prowess or statesmanlike qualities to John of Aviz, and he had
no “Holy Constable” to support him; and the Cortes of 1580, unlike that
which in 1385 had listened to the manly words of João das Regras, and
declared John “the Great” king of Portugal, listened to the promises of
Christovão de Moura, and rejected the Prior of Crato. Dom Antonio raised
a few soldiers, but the Duke of Alva who entered Portugal at the head of
twenty thousand men, defeated them without diffi{283}{282}culty at Alcantara on
August 26th, when the pretender fled to France, and Philip II. was
proclaimed king.
PHILIP II.
In 1581 Philip II. of Spain and I. of Portugal, as he now styled
himself, solemnly entered Lisbon, and in the presence of a great Cortes
held at Thomar he swore on April 15, 1581, that he and his successors
would observe the following conditions, which had been settled by his
agents. He swore that he would maintain the privileges and liberties of
the Portuguese people; that the Cortes should be frequently summoned to
meet in Portugal; that the viceroy or chief governor should always be a
native, unless the king should give that charge to one of the royal
family; that the royal household should be kept up on the same scale as
hitherto; that all offices, civil, military, and judicial, and all
dignities in the Church, and in the orders of knighthood, within the
kingdom, should be conferred upon Portuguese subjects alone; that the
commerce of Africa, Persia, and India should be reserved to them, and
carried on only in their vessels; that he would make no royal grant of
any city, town, or royal jurisdiction to any but Portuguese; that
forfeited or lapsed estates should never be absorbed in the royal
domain, but be regranted to some relative of the last possessor or to
some other Portuguese subject; that the king should reside as much as
possible in Portugal, and that, when he did come, he should not take the
houses of private individuals for his officers, but observe the custom
of Portugal; that there should be always resident at the royal court an
ecclesiastic, a chancellor,{284} a treasurer, and two masters of requests,
of Portuguese birth and nationality, to manage all business relating to
their country; that the revenue of Portugal should be kept distinct from
that of Spain, and spent in the kingdom; that all matters of justice
should be finally settled there; that Portuguese noblemen should be
admitted to offices in the households of the King and Queen of Spain;
that all customs duties at the land frontiers should be abolished; and
that King Philip should at once grant three hundred thousand crowns out
of his royal treasury to redeem prisoners, repair cities, and relieve
the miseries which the plague had brought upon the Portuguese people.
All these conditions Philip II. solemnly swore to observe, and he was in
consequence recognized as King of Portugal, not only in Portugal itself,
but in Brazil and the Indian settlements, where Fernão Telles had
succeeded the viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, as governor-general.
The other candidates for the crown of Portugal were obliged to acquiesce
in Philip’s success; the Duke of Braganza, though greatly disappointed
at only receiving the office of Constable of Portugal and the Order of
the Golden Fleece instead of the sovereignty of Brazil, was too
apathetic to resist, and, in face of his apathy, the Dukes of Parma and
Savoy were forced to surrender their claims, which were obviously
inferior to those of the Duchess of Braganza. Only the Prior of Crato
persisted in his attempts to win the throne from Philip by relying on
the old dislike of the Portuguese people for the Spaniards. He was
cordially received in France by{285} Catherine de’ Medici, who, though
Italian by birth, was true to the French policy of trying to weaken
Spain; and through her influence a strong French fleet of sixty ships of
war, with many troops on board, was sent, under the command of Philip
Strozzi, to the Azores, which had recognized Dom Antonio in 1580 as king
of Portugal, and had refused to acknowledge Philip. But the ill-luck of
the Prior of Crato followed him; the French fleet was defeated at
Terceira by the Spanish admiral, Don Alvaro de Bacam on July 26, 1582;
Strozzi was killed, and Dom Antonio escaped with difficulty to England.
There Elizabeth received him cordially, and in 1589, the year after the
defeat of the Great Armada, she sent a strong fleet, under Sir Francis
Drake and Sir John Norris, to help him win back his “kingdom.” This
attempt also proved a failure; Maulā Ahmed ibn Mohammed of Morocco
was prevented from advancing to the prior the loan of two hundred
thousand crowns, which he had promised on receiving Dom Antonio’s son,
Dom Christovão, as a hostage, by Philip’s timely surrender of Arzila;
Drake and Norris quarrelled, and the English retired without effecting
anything of importance. The unfortunate prior, finding that Elizabeth
would do nothing more for him, once more went to France, where he died
in great poverty and distress on August 26, 1595. He was buried in the
Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois at Paris, where the inscription on his
tomb styles him “King of Portugal”; and he left several children behind
him, who were not recognized as legitimate, owing to the fact that
their{286} father had taken a vow of chastity on becoming a Knight of Malta.
The attempts of the Prior of Crato did not affect the equanimity of
Philip II.; he satisfied himself, when he entered his new kingdom, by
making fifty-two exceptions to the general amnesty, which he had
declared, including Dom Antonio himself and his chief adviser, the
Bishop of Guarda. He returned to Spain shortly afterwards, leaving his
nephew, the Cardinal-Archduke Albert as viceroy at Lisbon, with a strong
guard of Spanish soldiers. The most interesting occurrences of the
cardinal’s administration were the risings of the two first “false Dom
Sebastians.” It has been said that the lower classes of the Portuguese
people refused to believe that the young king was dead, and it was not
long before impostors arose, who tried to make profit out of this
credulity. The history of these impostors[24] is as curious in its way
as those of the “False Smerdis,” the “False Demetrius,” and the
pseudo-Louis XVII.s, and proves how strong a hold the memory of Dom
Sebastian, in spite of his being a rash and foolhardy tyrant, had taken
upon the minds of the Portuguese people. The first two of these
impostors, who were mockingly called the “King of Pennamacor” and the
“King of Ericeira” from the headquarters of their operations, were
Portuguese of low birth, whose risings were easily put down. The
original inventor of the idea was the son of a tiler of Alçobaça, named
Sebastião{287} Gonzales, who, after leading a profligate life, had retired
to a hermitage near Pennamacor. From this retirement he emerged in July,
1584, and declared that he was King Sebastian; that he had escaped after
the battle of Alcacer Quibir, and had since been praying in the
hermitage, but that the miseries of his people had reached his ears, and
he had determined to come forth to remedy them. He was accompanied by
two men, who styled themselves Dom Christovão de Tavora and the Bishop
of Guarda, and began to collect money in Pennamacor and the
neighbourhood. The trio were speedily arrested and marched through the
streets of Lisbon to show that they were impostors; and the false
Sebastian was then sent to the galleys for life, and the pretended
Bishop of Guarda was hanged. In the following year, one Mattheus
Alvares, son of a mason at Ericeira, declared himself to be the lamented
Dom Sebastian, to whom he bore a considerable personal resemblance, and
solemnly promised to marry the daughter of Pedro Affonso, a rich farmer,
whom he created Count of Torres Novas. His future father-in-law advanced
the impostor a large sum of money, and he had raised a small corps of
eight hundred fanatical followers, when the cardinal-archduke thought it
necessary to send royal troops against him. The poor enthusiasts were
defeated with much loss, and both the pretender and Pedro Affonso were
hanged and quartered in Lisbon.
This severe punishment effectually checked the appearance of any fresh
impostors in Portugal itself, and the populace, though firmly convinced
that Dom{288} Sebastian would one day appear again, were not to be deceived
by any more pretenders.
But these stories had spread far beyond the limits of Portugal, and two
more attempts to personate the deceased monarch were made in Spain and
Italy. The first of these impostors was a handsome young man named
Gabriel Espinosa, who bore a striking resemblance to the King of
Portugal, and who was given out as Dom Sebastian by a Portuguese Jesuit,
named Madujal, who introduced him to Donna Anna, a natural daughter of
Don John of Austria, and induced her to believe in him. The whole scheme
partook rather of the nature of a personal intrigue than of a political
plot. Donna Anna, who was very wealthy, showered favours on the young
man and his sponsor, and even advocated his claims to Philip II. The
deception was, however, too obviously absurd to gain many supporters,
and Espinosa and his clerical adviser were both executed in 1594. Far
more curious is the story of Marco Tullio, a poor Calabrian peasant, who
could not speak a word of Portuguese, but who nevertheless asserted that
he was Dom Sebastian in 1603, twenty-five years after the disaster of
Alcacer Quibir. His story was most carefully worked out, and his
imposture ranks among the most extraordinary on record. He asserted that
he was the king, and had saved his life and liberty by remaining on the
battle-field among the dead bodies; that he had made his way into
Portugal, and had given notice of his existence to the Cardinal-King
Henry, who had sought his life; that he then returned to Africa, because
he was unwilling to disturb the peace of the{289} kingdom by a civil war,
and travelled about in the garb of a penitent; that he next became a
hermit in Sicily, and was on his way to Rome to declare himself to the
Pope, when he was robbed by his servants, and obliged to find his way to
Venice. When he told this elaborate tale at Venice, he got a few
Portuguese residents there to believe in him, and was soon arrested in
that city at the demand of the Spanish ambassador as an impostor and a
criminal. He was several times examined, but stuck to his story so
cleverly, and with such obstinacy, that the authorities, who were not
sorry to embarrass the Spanish Government, refused to punish him as an
impostor. The story of his claim spread so widely abroad, that the
enemies of Spain became anxious to prove it true, and to set him up as a
thorn in the side of Philip III. The Prince of Orange went so far as to
send Dom Christovão, son of the Prior of Crato, to request the Venetian
authorities to make further inquiries; but those prudent governors only
held a solemn public examination, when the Calabrian told his tale
again, and then expelled him from their dominions without expressing any
opinion as to its truth. From Venice he went to Padua in the disguise of
a monk, and thence to Florence, where the Grand Duke of Tuscany had him
arrested and given up to the Spanish Viceroy at Naples. He was
imprisoned in the Castle del Ovo, publicly exposed, and sent to the
galleys; and as he made adherents even there, he was transferred to San
Lucar, and eventually executed. The singular boldness of this imposture,
and the tenacity with which the ignorant Calabrian stuck to his story,
in spite of{290} its evident falsity, make it memorable in the history of
pretenders.
The “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” as the domination of Spain over Portugal
from 1580 to 1640 is called, was a time of unexampled disaster for the
country in every quarter, and the Portuguese, with their independence,
seemed to have lost all their old courage and heroism. Under the
administration of the Cardinal-Archduke Albert great efforts were made
to send a powerful contingent to the fleet known as “The Great Armada,”
and the destruction of this fleet by the English in 1588 ruined the
naval power of Portugal. So low did the country fall, that it could not
even defend its own ports, and in 1595 the English, under Sir Francis
Drake, sacked the important city of Faro in the Algarves. As a portion
of the Spanish dominions, Portugal had to suffer defeat from all the
enemies of Spain. The foremost of these enemies were England and
Holland, and the Dutch were the first nation to break down the
Portuguese monopoly of the lucrative trade with Asia. This they did with
the more ease, since, with the true commercial spirit, they not only
imported merchandise from the East to Holland, but also distributed it
through Dutch merchants to every country in Europe; whereas the
Portuguese in the days of their commercial prosperity were satisfied
with bringing over the commodities to Lisbon, and letting foreign
nations come and fetch them. The incursion of the Dutch merchants into
Asia was caused by the action of Philip II. in closing the port of
Lisbon to them in 1594; and in 1595 Cornelius{291} Houtman, a Dutchman, who
had been employed by the Portuguese as a pilot in the Indian seas, and
had afterwards been imprisoned by the Inquisition, led a Dutch fleet
round the Cape of Good Hope for the first time.
But before studying the rapid manner in which, first, the Dutch, and
then the English and other foreign nations, contended for a share in the
Asiatic trade, and eventually destroyed the Portuguese power in the
East, it is necessary to draw attention to the fact that this
destruction did not commence until the beginning of the seventeenth
century, and the reign of Philip III. The ruin of Portugal was indeed
due to the policy of Philip II., whose enemies Holland and England
consummated it; but it was hardly commenced in his reign, which ended in
1598. Indeed, during that period, when the power of Portugal was on the
very point of extinction, its Asiatic trade, and more especially its
Indian trade, was at its height.[25] Philip II. faithfully observed the
promises he had made to the Cortes of Thomar in this respect. All the
viceroys he appointed were Portuguese, and he made no attempt to intrude
Spaniards into either official appointments or into the conduct of the
Asiatic commerce. The Portuguese viceroys of his reign, Dom Francisco
Mascarenhas, Dom Duarte de Menezes, Dom Manoel de Sousa Coutinho, Dom
Mathias de Alboquerque, and Dom Francisco da Gama, were all able and
enterprizing rulers, who increased the prestige of the Portuguese power
throughout the East by many deeds of daring,{292} and especially by the
conquest of the King of Kandy in Ceylon. The yearly fleets increased in
number; the peoples of the East had got accustomed to regard the
Portuguese as invincible; and the wheels of administration, from long
practice, ran smoothly. Especially active were the missionaries,
principally Jesuits, in Asia, and their progress was forwarded rather
than checked by the accession of Philip II. to the throne of Portugal.
The bishopric of Goa was raised to an archbishopric in 1577, and
suffragan bishops were appointed wherever the influence of the
Portuguese spread, and it is curious to note that an important mission
headed by Dom Luis de Sequeira, consecrated Bishop of Japan, and Father
Alexandra de Valignano, was despatched to Japan to 1598 and had much
success.[26] But though the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church in
Asia paid much attention to preaching the gospel among the distant
peoples of the East, in India they were chiefly occupied in persecuting
the Nestorian Christians on the Malabar coast with the help of the
Inquisition. These Nestorian Christians were especially obnoxious to the
orthodox Catholics, who got the Portuguese to prevent the arrival of any
consecrated Nestorian bishop in India by blockading the coast, and who
solemnly condemned the doctrines of the Nestorians in the famous synod
of Diamper (Udayampura) held by Archbishop Alexis de Menezes in 1599.
The history of the work of the Jesuits in India at this time is
peculiarly interesting; the keynote to their policy is contained in the
following words: “The Christian{294}{293} religion cannot be regarded as
naturalized in a country, until it is in a position to propagate its own
priesthood;”[27] and it must be remembered that the credit of their
activity must not be attributed to Portuguese priests alone, for Jesuits
of all nations cooperated in the work of evangelization, and among them
should be noted Thomas Stephens, an Englishman and rector of the Jesuit
college at Salsette. In preaching, teaching, and writing these early
Jesuit missionaries were equally able, and it is recorded that the first
book printed in India was printed by the Jesuits at Cochin in 1570. In
opposition to this activity must be noted the terrible severity of the
Inquisition at Goa, which stained the labours of these early
missionaries with blood.
FIGURES OF MEN AT AN AUTO DA FÉ.
(From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne,” &c. La Haye, 1720.)
The last twenty years of the sixteenth century, comprised in the reign
of Philip II., from 1580 to 1598, mark the height of the wealth and
power of the Portuguese in the East, but their fall into nothingness
there during the reigns of Philip III. and Philip IV. was as rapid as
their success had been astounding. The first great blows were struck by
the Dutch merchants, whose ships were sent out at their own expense, and
in no way protected by the State. In 1597 two years after Houtman had
led a Dutch fleet round the Cape, the Dutch established a factory in
Java. In 1601 they defeated the Portuguese governor of Malacca, and took
that city; in 1607 they conquered the Portuguese settlements in the
Moluccas and Sumatra; and in 1618 they founded Batavia, which became the
capital of the trade of the Spice{295} Islands, and soon not only took the
place of Malacca, but rivalled Goa. Not satisfied with the trade of the
further East, they attacked that of China also, and in 1635 occupied the
island of Formosa. At a later date they even ousted the Portuguese from
their chief settlements in India and Ceylon, always excepting Goa,
which, according to Catholic belief, has ever been preserved to the
Portuguese by the holy bones of St. Francis Xavier. Meanwhile, just as
the Dutch broke the power of the Portuguese in the Spice Islands and
China, a new power had arisen to attack their Indian monopoly. The
ancient allies of the Portuguese, the English, now made no distinction
between them and their bitter enemies, the Spaniards, and during the
last forty years of the “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” they laid the
foundation of their empire in India. During the reign of Elizabeth, the
English had sacked Pernambuco in 1594, destroyed Fort Arguin on the
African coast in 1595, and ravaged the Azores in 1597; during that of
James I. they attacked the Indian trade of Portugal. As was the case
with the Dutch, the assault upon the Portuguese monopoly was the work of
private traders, not of the State. This is not the place to trace the
slow growth of the English power in India, but it is enough to say that
the English ships went to Asia with no idea of conquest, and solely with
the desire to trade. This the Portuguese desired to hinder, and in
trying to prevent the English from taking on board cargoes at Surat in
1615, the Portuguese were defeated by Captain Best, and thus lost their
reputation for invincibility {296}on the north-west coast of India. The
English, instead of showing a bold front, made efforts to live in
harmony with the Indian kings, and especially with the Great Mogul, and
were rewarded by being looked upon with favour instead of with
suspicion, and being allowed to set up many commercial agencies. As
traders, the English merchants had no wish to go to war and maintained
no armies to defend their agencies, and the only offensive operation
they undertook against the Portuguese was in 1622, when they assisted
the Persians to capture Ormuz. These rapid onslaughts completely
overthrew the Portuguese power in Asia. The Dutch quickly absorbed all
the trade of the further East, and of the Spice Islands in particular;
the English gained a good hold upon that with Persia and North-western
India; and in 1629 the Portuguese commerce with Bengal was almost
destroyed by the capture of their headquarters, Hūglī, by Shah
Jehān who killed one thousand Portuguese, and carried over four
thousand, including women and children, into captivity. Even smaller
European nations attacked their monopoly, and in 1616 the Danes
established themselves at Serampore and Tranquebar. Against all these
blows, Portugal made little resistance; Golden Goa was shorn of its
pre-eminence; and the Portuguese fleets when homeward bound were preyed
upon by the Dutch and English cruisers.
It was not only in the East that disasters fell in quick succession upon
the Portuguese, but efforts were made also by the Dutch to dispossess
them of their great empire in South America. The history of the Dutch in
Brazil is as remarkable as their history in{297} Asia, and considering the
small size of Holland, the same feeling of astonishment, which strikes
the student, when he reads of the exploits of the Portuguese in the
sixteenth century, affects him, when he examines the enterprises of the
Dutch in the seventeenth. It was in 1624, when success was assured in
Asia, that a Dutch West India Company was founded to drive the
Portuguese out of South America. The new company at once sent a fleet
under Admiral Willikens to attack Brazil, and this admiral met with
little opposition in the capture of San Salvador, the capital of
Portuguese South America. The Portuguese governor-general, Dom Diogo de
Mendonça, abandoned the city, but the Archbishop, Dom Miguel de
Teixeira, took his place, and calling on his clergy to take up arms, he
defended the city for a few days, and then retired to a neighbouring
port. Admiral Willikens plundered the city, and returned with a vast
booty, to the delight of his employers, and left only a small garrison
behind, which was soon driven back in all its forays, and eventually
closely blockaded by the gallant old archbishop, who took the title of
Captain-general of Brazil. In April, 1626, strong reinforcements arrived
under Dom Emmanuel de Menezes, and the city of San Salvador once more
fell into the hands of the Portuguese. It is not necessary to trace the
exact history of every Dutch expedition to Brazil; it is enough to say
that from 1626 to 1637, plunder was brought home every year and
distributed to the shareholders of the company, while no real attempt at
establishing trade or at colonization was made. This policy naturally
caused the{298} Dutch to be loathed by the Portuguese settlers as robbers
and pirates, and kept them in a state of perpetual disquietude. In 1637,
a great ruler, Count Maurice of Nassau, was sent out by the Dutch West
India Company as Governor-general of their possessions in South America,
which extended roughly over the four Captainships of Pernambuco,
Tamaraca, Paraiba, and Rio Grande. This great general and statesman
attempted to entirely destroy the Portuguese power in South America, and
to establish a Dutch dominion there. His warlike expeditions were
successful, excepting an attack on San Salvador, and he also managed to
establish a general system of administration over the seven northern
captainships with his capital at Mauriceburgh opposite the strongly
fortified island of the Recife. It was Maurice of Nassau, who gave up
the system of plundering the Portuguese, and substituted that of taxing
them, and his power was at its height, when the news of the revolution
of 1640, and of the overthrow of the Spanish domination, arrived in
Brazil and revived the spirits of the Portuguese colonists.
To compensate for all these losses, the destruction of the monopoly of
the Asiatic trade, the loss of Ormuz and Malacca, and the reduction of
the greater part of Brazil, what advantages had Portugal received? The
promises made by Philip II. to the Cortes of Thomar were mostly broken
by his successors. The Duke of Lerma and the Count-Duke of Olivares, the
all-powerful ministers of Philip III. and Philip IV. tried to see how
far and how entirely they could prove to the Portuguese people that they
were subject{299} to Spain, and not a free nation. The Cortes, instead of
being summoned frequently, was only summoned once during the reign of
Philip III., in 1619, in order to recognize his son as heir to the
throne; and was never summoned at all during the reign of Philip IV.
Spaniards filled every office in the kingdom, and more especially in the
garrison towns; Spanish ecclesiastics were consecrated to Portuguese
bishoprics; and the Portuguese council at the Court of Madrid was
reduced to a single secretary. Taxation was heavy, and the revenue from
it was not spent in the country, and the promise that no Portuguese land
should be granted to other than Portuguese subjects was often broken,
conspicuously in the case of the Duke of Lerma, who secured a grant of
the royal domains of Beja and Serpa. But Lerma and Olivares forgot that
the Portuguese were a separate race, with a great and noble history;
they would not be trampled on for ever, and to the surprise of Spain,
the little country rose in rebellion in 1640 and put an end to the
“Sixty Years’ Captivity.”
{300}
XIV.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1640.
THE Portuguese people groaned under the powerlessness and poverty which
fell to their lot during the Sixty Years’ Captivity. None of the
advantages which had been so eloquently prophesied by Christovão de
Moura as the inevitable result of a union with Spain had been
experienced. Instead of being protected by great Spanish armies, the
colonies and trade of Portugal had been left an open prey to the enemies
of Spain; it was on account of her union with Spain that the Dutch and
English attacked the Portuguese possessions in both East and West; and
in return for all she lost, Portugal did not even have the satisfaction
of retaining the independence of its local government, but was
administered for the benefit of Spaniards alone. The proverbial
Castilian haughtiness was especially aggravating to the nobles and
people of Portugal; there was no attempt made to unite the two peoples;
they kept apart like oil and water, and the traditional hatred of the
Spaniard grew to be more intense than ever. The loss of material
prosperity and the insolent demeanour of{301} the Spanish officials affected
all classes, high and low, and incited them to rebel, and to these
causes must be added the influence of the Portuguese writers. The great
Camoens had not lived to see the Spaniards supreme in his beloved
country, but he had successors during the Sixty Years’ Captivity, who
sang in the same lofty strain of the great deeds of the Portuguese
warriors during the heroic period. Such poems as the “Primeiro Cerco de
Dio” (“The First Siege of Diu”), by Francisco de Andrade; the “Segundo
Cerco de Dio,” by Jeronymo Corte-Real; the “Affonso Africano,” by Vasco
Mousinho de Quebedo; and the “Malacca Conquistada,” by Francisco de Sá
de Menezes, were all calculated to stir the hearts of the Portuguese of
the seventeenth century, and to make them desire to be worthy of their
great forefathers. Nor were the prose writers less eloquent than the
poets in telling of the great deeds of the past; the “Decadas” of Diogo
do Couto, and the “Asia,” “Europa,” “Africa,” and “America Portugueza,”
of Manoel de Faria e Sousa, continued the work of João de Barros in
making the Portuguese proud of their past exploits, while the
historians, Bernardo de Brito and Antonio Brandão, in their “Monarchia
Lusitana,” told the story of the centuries of independence before
Portugal became a province of Spain.
A universal feeling of discontent had arisen during the reigns of Philip
III. and Philip IV., but the final impulse from passive discontent to
active rebellion was supplied by the energy of certain Portuguese
noblemen, who relied for success on the weakness of Spain and on help
from France. The Spain of Philip{302} IV. was indeed very different to the
Spain of Charles V. and Philip II.; its days of greatness were over;
Holland was practically independent; and Catalonia was in revolt. On the
other hand, France had passed through the terrible civil wars of the
sixteenth century, and was being moulded into a mighty kingdom by the
hand of Richelieu. One of the keynotes of Richelieu’s policy was to
harass Spain; and for this reason the great cardinal encouraged the
revolt of the Catalans in 1639, and had long fomented the feeling of
discontent in Portugal. As early as 1636, one of Richelieu’s secret
agents is found writing to his master, “All Portugal cries aloud, ‘When
will the King of France deliver us from the Pharaoh of Spain’?”[28] and
in 1638 the cardinal sent one of his most trusted agents, the Chevalier
de Saint-Pé, to report upon the disposition of the Portuguese people.
Richelieu soon grasped the situation of affairs, and resolved to
encourage an open rebellion in Portugal, in order to secure an
independent ally in the Iberian Peninsula, which should be such a thorn
in the side of Spain as Scotland had in former days been in the side of
England. The discontent of the people was shown in many overt acts; in
1634 the people of Lisbon refused to pay their taxes; in 1637 a serious
riot broke out at Evora, which remained in a state of insurrection for
many months; and attacks upon Spanish soldiers and officials constantly
took place all over the country.{303}
TABLE III. The Dukes of Braganza.
{304}
But the discontented people of Portugal wanted some one to rally round;
the nobility wanted a leader. This leader and representative was found
in John, eighth Duke of Braganza, the legitimate heir to the throne.
This great nobleman was the head of the most noble family in Portugal,
and the direct lineal descendant of the bastard son of John “the Great,”
who had married the daughter of the Holy Constable, and he was further
the grandson of Donna Catherine, the rightful heiress to the
Cardinal-King, Dom Henry. Philip II. had purchased the acquiescence of
the husband of Donna Catherine in his usurpation by securing to him the
vast possessions of the Braganza family in Portugal, but he had not
fulfilled his promise of the grant of Brazil in full sovereignty, to the
great disgust of the heiress to the throne of Portugal. She had inspired
her hatred for Spain and her love for Portugal into her son, Dom
Theodosio, seventh duke, but her grandson, Dom John, was an indolent and
timid nobleman, who preferred an easy life to a crown. Dom John had
succeeded to the duchy and estates in 1630, at the age of twenty-six,
and he had married Donna Luisa de Guzman, daughter of the Duke of Medina
Sidonia, in 1633. This marriage had been hailed with delight by
Olivares, as it seemed to bind the Braganza family closer to Spain, and
he persuaded Philip IV. to grant Dom John as a wedding-gift the duchy
and lordship of Guimaraens, which had been the property of Dom Edward,
youngest son of Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” the prince through whom the
Duke of Braganza traced his claim to the throne. But this marriage did
not cement the friendship of the House of Braganza{305} with Spain. On the
contrary, the duchess seemed to surrender her Spanish nationality; she
made a point of speaking Portuguese, and became more patriotic than the
Portuguese themselves; she never forgot that her husband was by rights a
king, and was encouraged to use all her great abilities to scheme for
the throne of Portugal by the recollection of a prophecy made to her in
her childhood that she should be a queen. Dom John himself did not share
her opinions; he was no warrior, but loved hunting, music, and the arts,
and his lovely hunting-seat at Villa Viçosa, far more than he did
politics or even his country. But his easy nature made him subservient
to the will of his duchess, and she, through the duke’s agent, João
Pinto Ribeiro, Professor of Civil Law at Coimbra, let the nobility of
Portugal know that the Duke of Braganza would put himself at their head,
if they would but strike a blow for the freedom of their country.
Portugal was at the period, when the Duchess of Braganza involved her
husband in her ambitious schemes, under the nominal rule of Margaret of
Savoy, Duchess of Mantua; and the Court of this princess was, contrary
to the promises made by Philip II. to the Cortes of Thomar, entirely
filled with foreigners. Her Lord High Steward or Mordomo-Mor was the
Marquis de la Puebla, a Spaniard, and her Estribeiro-Mor, or Master of
the Horse, was the Marquis de Bainetti, an Italian, while among more
important posts, two Spaniards, Don Didace de Cardenas and Don Fernando
de Castro, were respectively general commanding the Portuguese cavalry,{306}
and controller of the Portuguese navy. The most important native of the
country admitted to her council was Dom Sebastião de Mattos de Noronha,
Archbishop of Braga, Primate of the kingdom, and a wealthy nobleman, but
the chief administrative power was confided to Miguel de Vasconcellos de
Brito, Secretary of State. This man was hated by his fellow-countrymen
with the intensity of hatred only felt for a renegade. He had won the
favour of Olivares, the Spanish Minister, by his skill in squeezing
money out of Portugal, and his energy and activity made him
indispensable to the Duchess of Mantua. But if he was hated by all
classes of the Portuguese people, he was more especially obnoxious to
the Portuguese nobility owing to his policy of excluding them from all
posts of honour and emolument, and his personal insolence towards them.
This was the state of the government and the general position of affairs
in Portugal when João Pinto Ribeiro, acting with the full sanction of
the Duchess, and the half-hearted assent of the Duke, of Braganza, began
to form a conspiracy among the leading noblemen to bring about a
revolution and expel the Spaniards. If he could only combine the nobles
to take the lead and strike the first blow, he knew well that the people
would warmly support them. The first step was to make the future king
acquainted with his friends, and for this purpose great hunting parties
were organized at Villa Viçosa, to which the most patriotic Portuguese
noblemen were invited in turn. This behaviour, and the attitude of the
young duchess, began to inspire Olivares with a vague{307} alarm, and he
began to regret the policy which had allowed the rightful heir to the
throne of Portugal to retain his vast estates in the quarter where his
influence was most to be feared. He first offered the government of the
Milanese, an office generally held by a prince of the blood, to the Duke
of Braganza, and, when the appointment was declined on the score of
ignorance of Italian politics, the astute Spanish statesman began to
feel still more uneasy. But it was necessary to disguise his
apprehensions, for he knew that it was impossible to arrest the Duke of
Braganza on his estates without causing serious disturbances, and he
therefore directed the duke to make a tour of Portugal in his capacity
of Constable to inspect the condition of the defences. This tour gave
the duke an opportunity to make the acquaintance of the greater part of
the people, while he avoided falling into the various traps set for him.
Then Olivares delivered his last stroke of policy; he ordered out the
whole ban and arrière-ban of Portugal to serve under the king in
person in putting down the Catalan rebellion, and directed the Duke of
Braganza to proceed immediately to Madrid. The duke delayed his
departure for a time, and João Pinto Ribeiro informed the noblemen who
had been forming a conspiracy in Lisbon that they must strike at once or
it would be too late.
The names of these noblemen are worthy of record, not only because of
the daring and successful revolution they initiated, but because they
show how patriotic the Portuguese nobility were as a body, since most of
the famous families of the early history of{308} Portugal and of the heroic
period are represented among them. The leaders of the famous forty who
planned the revolution were Miguel de Almeida, a venerable nobleman, at
whose house the first meeting of the conspirators was held; Pedro de
Mendonça Furtado, Hereditary Grand Chamberlain or Camereiro-Mor; Antonio
and Luis de Almada; Jorge de Mello, Hereditary Grand Huntsman; Antonio
de Mello de Menezes, his brother; Estevão, and Luis da Cunha; Rodrigo
and Emmanuel de Sá; Pedro Mascarenhas, Carlos de Noronha, Gaston de
Coutinho and Antonio de Saldanha. The Archbishop of Lisbon, Rodrigo da
Cunha, the most popular ecclesiastical dignitary of the realm, if not
actually a conspirator, certainly had some knowledge of what was going
on through his relatives, the Almadas and Da Cunhas. The conspirators
met regularly and skilfully planned their rising, and in all their
deliberations João Pinto Ribeiro, though not a nobleman himself, and
rather looked down on by the forty, showed himself the boldest and most
sagacious leader of them all. There was no idea of establishing a
republic, in imitation of the Netherlands, as Vertot absurdly states,
for the keystone of their plan was to make a show of legality, and to
assert that they were merely placing the rightful king upon the throne.
Their preparations were fully made, when João Pinto Ribeiro brought the
news that the blow must be struck at once, or else that the Duke of
Braganza must proceed to Madrid.
The 1st of December, 1640, was the day appointed for the revolution and
on the morning of that day the conspirators assembled by different
streets in{309} front of the palace. There had been no treachery, and
consequently the viceregal court was quite unprepared for resistance.
The signal was given by a pistol shot from Ribeiro, and each conspirator
went to his appointed place to accomplish his appointed task. Dom Miguel
de Almeida overpowered the German guards of the palace without any
difficulty, and Dom Jorge de Mello and Dom Estevão da Cunha were equally
successful with the Spanish guards. The third party, under the
leadership of Ribeiro, forced their way into the palace, and moved
towards the apartments of the hated Secretary of State, Miguel de
Vasconcellos. On their way they met Francisco de Soares de Albergaria,
the “Corregidor Civil,” or civil judge, who, in answer to their cries of
“Long live the Duke of Braganza!” shouted “Long live the King of Spain
and Portugal!” and was then immediately shot. They next came across
Antonio Correa, the secretary’s chief clerk, whose insolence had almost
rivalled his master’s, and Antonio de Menezes struck him down with his
poniard and severely wounded him. At last they reached the apartments of
the secretary, whom they discovered hidden in a cupboard under a mass of
papers. The trembling wretch was dragged from his concealment, and shot
by Dom Rodrigo de Sá. All parties now rushed to the part of the palace
inhabited by the Duchess of Mantua, whom they found with the Archbishop
of Braga. The princess was no coward, and boldly faced the conspirators,
but she was informed by Dom Carlos de Noronha that she was a prisoner,
and the life of the Archbishop of Braga, who attempted to cut his way{311}{310}
through his opponents, was with difficulty saved by Dom Miguel de
Almeida.
PORTUGUESE GENTLEMEN.
(From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne,” &c. La Haye, 1720.)
These successes in the palace were followed by equal successes in the
city of Lisbon. The populace of all classes detested the Spanish
domination; they rose in a body, armed themselves as best they could,
and arrested every Spaniard they could find from the Marquis de la
Puebla to the naval officers on shore from the Spanish vessels lying in
the Tagus. Dom Antonio de Saldanha, as previously arranged, entered the
Relacão, or High Court of Justice, and informed the judges of the
revolution, and the president, Gonçalo de Sousa, immediately began to
pronounce his decrees in the name of King John IV., instead of King
Philip III. Dom Gaston de Coutinho set free all the political prisoners,
and some young men rowed off to the three Spanish galleons in the port,
and easily obtained possession of them, since most of their officers had
already been arrested on shore. There remained only the citadel, or
castle, of St. George, garrisoned by a strong Spanish force under Don
Luiz de Campo. This important post was obtained by a stratagem of Dom
Antonio de Almada, who forced the Duchess of Mantua to sign an order for
its surrender by a threat to assassinate all the Spanish prisoners
already taken, and the order was willingly obeyed by the timorous
governor. The conspirators then assembled in the palace, and amidst the
shouts of the populace, the Archbishop of Lisbon was proclaimed
Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, with Dom Miguel de Almeida, Dom Pedro
de Mendonça Furtado, and Dom Antonio de Almada as councillors{312} of state.
The new government sent off expresses in all directions to announce the
news of the successful revolution, and obtained peaceable possession of
all the chief fortresses and strong places round Lisbon, of Belem,
Bugio, S. Antonio, Almada, and Cascaes, with the exception only of S.
Julian, at the mouth of the Tagus.
The Duke and Duchess of Braganza were all this time waiting with
feverish impatience at Villa Viçosa for news of the great undertaking,
and on the following day, Sunday, December 2nd, Dom Jorge de Mello
arrived, after travelling all night, and hailed the Duke and Duchess as
King and Queen of Portugal. The neighbouring country was devoted to the
duke and his family and joyfully received the news of his accession, and
Affonso de Mello took possession of Elvas, the strongest city in
Portugal, in the name of John IV., without any bloodshed. On December
3rd the new sovereign entered Lisbon amidst general rejoicings, and on
December 15th he was solemnly crowned in the Cathedral of Lisbon. Never
was a sudden revolution more successful. From Oporto to Faro the people
everywhere rose in rebellion; the Spanish arms were torn down; the
Spanish garrisons were expelled, and John IV. was hailed with
acclamation. A Cortes was summoned to meet at Lisbon for the first time
since 1619, and on January 19, 1641, John IV. was declared King of
Portugal, as the rightful heir of Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” and the
whole Cortes swore to obey him, and recognized his eldest son, Dom
Theodosio, as heir to the throne. The new sovereign determined to meet
his loyal people half{313} way, so he declared that his patrimonial estates
were sufficient to meet the expenses of his royal household, and that
the revenues of the Crown lands should for the future be spent on
national needs. He bestowed important posts and orders on the leading
conspirators, and bribed Don Fernando de la Cueva to surrender the
fortress of S. Julian, the only place which resisted his authority. The
last person to be informed of this sudden and successful revolution was
the former king, Philip IV. of Spain and III. of Portugal. His courtiers
all feared to tell him the news, and when it became necessary to break
it to him, the Count-Duke Olivares accomplished the feat with his usual
adroitness. “Sire,” he said to the king with a pleased countenance, “I
have to congratulate you on a most fortunate event. Your Majesty has
just obtained a powerful duchy, and some magnificent estates.” “By what
means,” answered the astonished monarch. “The Duke of Braganza,” said
Olivares, “has madly allowed himself to be seduced by the populace, who
have proclaimed him King of Portugal. His vast estates are therefore
forfeited, and become the property of your Majesty, who, by the
annihilation of this family, will in future reign securely and peaceably
over that kingdom.”
Olivares had every reason to speak with confidence, for there could be
no doubt that Portugal, weakened by her long subjection, could do little
or nothing to resist the power of Spain, if it could be fully employed.
But, fortunately for the independence of Portugal, Spain was distracted
by the Catalan rebellion and foreign war, and was unable to exert her
strength for the{314} time being. Both the new king and his advisers felt,
however, that it would not be wise to count too much or too long upon
this fortunate circumstance, and he sent ambassadors all over Europe to
inform the foreign sovereigns of the revolution, and to beg for their
help and alliance. The old Chancellor Oxenstiern, who governed Sweden
after the death of her warrior monarch, Gustavus Adolphus, during the
minority of Queen Christina, promptly recognized the accession of the
new dynasty, and welcomed it as another breach in the power of Spain.
Charles I. of England, after some delay, also recognized John IV., but
he was too much occupied by his quarrels with the Parliament to pay much
attention to foreign politics. The Dutch received the news of the
revolution with joy, and compared it to their own successful rebellion
against Spain, and they at once concluded a treaty with Portugal, and
promised to send assistance. But it was to France that John IV. looked
with most confidence for help; he remembered the secret emissaries of
Richelieu and their lavish promises; and on January 22, 1641, three days
after his coronation, he sent two of his most accomplished courtiers,
Francisco de Mello and Antonio Coelho de Carvalho, on a special mission
to Paris. They were received with much cordiality by the great cardinal,
who understood how thoroughly Spain must be crippled by the Catalan and
Portuguese rebellions, and, to their surprise, also by the Queen of
France, Anne of Austria, the sister of Philip IV. De Mello ventured to
hint his surprise at this hearty reception, when the queen made a famous
reply: “True it is, that I am the{315} sister of his Catholic Majesty, but
am I not also the mother of the Dauphin?” Their negotiations ended in
the conclusion of an offensive and defensive treaty between France and
Portugal, signed on June 1, 1641, by which the King of France promised
to make no peace with Spain until the independence of Portugal was fully
recognized. These embassies and treaties ended in the arrival of a
strong French fleet, under the command of the Chevalier de Brézé, in the
Tagus, on August 7, 1641, followed by a Dutch fleet, under Admiral
Gylfels, on September 10th.
At this very time, before the first king of the House of Braganza had
been a year upon the throne, a serious conspiracy was in progress, which
had for its aim the re-establishment of the power of Spain. This
conspiracy was almost entirely the work of one man, Dom Sebastião de
Mattos de Noronha, Archbishop of Braga, and Primate of Portugal. This
prelate had not been in any way interfered with by the new government,
but he felt that he had lost the power which he had enjoyed during the
viceroyalty of the Duchess of Mantua, and he had never forgiven the
danger in which his life had been placed on the day of the outbreak of
the revolution in Lisbon. He first engaged the Marquis of Villa Real,
and his son, the Duke of Caminha, to join him. Their family boasted of
royal blood, and ranked next to that of the Duke of Aveiro in the
kingdom of Portugal, and they felt indignant that no important posts had
been conferred upon them for their acquiescence in the revolution. The
marquis was won over by a promise that he should be the Viceroy of
Portugal, if the conspiracy{316} succeeded, and his son threw himself so
heartily into the project that the whole plot is generally known as the
“Caminha conspiracy.” The other chief laymen engaged were the Count of
Armamar, the nephew of the primate, the Count of Ballerais, Lourenço
Peres de Carvalho, keeper of the treasury, who feared to lose the
lucrative post which he had held so long under the Spanish domination,
and Antonio Correa, the confidential clerk of the murdered Vasconcellos,
who had been severely wounded in the outbreak of December 1st. A far
more important ally than any of these noblemen and officials, was the
Grand Inquisitor of Portugal, Dom Sebastião de Tello, Bishop of Leiria,
who was persuaded to promise the “novães Christiãos,” or half-converted
Jews, a cessation of all persecution if they would join in overthrowing
John IV. They, on their part, were ready to assist because the new
monarch had absolutely refused to make any concessions to them for fear
of offending the Pope. The arrangements were soon made; it was settled
that the “novães Christiãos” were to set fire to the palace on August
5th; that the king was to be stabbed in the confusion which would ensue;
and that the Duchess of Mantua should be released from her convent, and
again placed in power. The Count-Duke Olivares gladly acquiesced in all
the schemes of the treacherous archbishop, and despatches giving all the
details of the plot were entrusted to a converted Jew named Baese, to
send to Madrid. These despatches fell into the hands of Marquis of
Ayamonte, a Spanish nobleman, and a relation of the new Queen of
Portugal,{317} who was acting as intermediary between John IV. and his
brother-in-law, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and the marquis promptly
sent them to Lisbon. Forewarned was forearmed, and on August 5th, the
day fixed for the rising, all the leaders of the conspiracy were
arrested. Baese confessed, when put to the torture, and on August 29th
all the noblemen concerned, including the Marquis of Villa Real and the
Duke of Caminha, were publicly executed at Lisbon, while the Primate and
the Grand Inquisitor were condemned to imprisonment for life.
This severe punishment did not check the ardour of the friends of Spain,
who were chiefly officials and discontented nobles, and numbered few
adherents among the people, and in 1643 a new plot was discovered,
headed by Francisco de Lucena, Secretary of State, who was promptly
executed. In spite of these difficulties, the government managed to get
together an army; it was neither well-disciplined nor well-equipped, but
popular enthusiasm took the place of experience, and on May 26, 1642,
the Portuguese under the command of Mathias de Alboquerque, defeated a
Spanish army under the Baron de Molingen at Montijo. This victory, which
was loudly compared to that of Aljubarrota, was, in truth, of no great
importance from a military point of view, but it invigorated the spirit
of the Portuguese people, and encouraged them to persist in fighting for
their independence. From every quarter of the globe news arrived that
the old Portuguese possessions had declared for John IV. Mozambique, Goa
and the possessions in India, Malacca, and Macao, all threw{318} off the
domination of Spain, and prepared to send money and men to Lisbon; while
Brazil, the most valuable possession of the Portuguese crown, since the
Dutch had taken possession of the Asiatic trade, began a gallant
struggle for the House of Braganza, a struggle which brought about a war
with the Dutch in Europe, and lost the Portuguese the assistance which
had been promised them in 1641 by the arrival of the fleet under
Gylfels.
The story of the great dominion acquired for the Dutch in South America
by Count Maurice of Nassau has been told; and the wealth received by the
Dutch West India Company from his efforts was only inferior to that of
the Dutch East India Company. The Count had managed matters on a large
scale; he had built or strengthened forty-five fortresses; he commanded
a regular army of three thousand men and a fleet of ninety ships; and he
sent over to Holland no less than twenty-five thousand chests of sugar a
year. But in spite of his success he recognized that this dominion
depended on the sword; the Dutch were not good colonists, for they never
thought of making their homes in Brazil, but always of returning some
day to Holland; and all the European settlers and planters in the five
captainships held by the Dutch were of Portuguese descent. Further, the
native Brazilians were on more friendly terms with the Portuguese than
the Dutch owing to the labours of the Jesuits among them. Count Maurice
of Nassau saw therefore that it was impossible to oust the Portuguese
and replace them by Dutch settlers, so he established a dominion,{319}
resembling that of the English in India, which rested for its keystone
upon the military possession of the country and the maintenance of
strong garrisons in the various fortresses. It need hardly be said that
the Portuguese of all the various captainships freely communicated with
each other, and so wise and prudent was the administration of Count
Maurice that the Portuguese settlers in his captainships were envied by
those who remained under the power of Spain.
But this attitude of mind changed, when the news arrived of the
successful revolution of December, 1640. Dom Antonio Telles da Silva,
the Portuguese Governor-General at once proclaimed King John IV. at San
Salvador, and the Portuguese in the Dutch captainships felt an immediate
desire to join their brethren. Matters of European policy however
prevented them from striking a blow at once; John IV. could not afford
to make enemies of the Dutch, and one of the terms of his alliance with
them was that matters should remain exactly as they were in Brazil for
ten years. However the Portuguese colonists had not to wait ten years
owing to the ungrateful behaviour of the Dutch themselves. The Dutch
West India Company could not appreciate the political ideas of Maurice
of Nassau; these traders wanted large profits and not a great empire;
they were disgusted at the amounts spent on the fortresses and the army,
and in 1644 they recalled the great man whose ideas were too grand for
them to fathom. Immediately on his departure, matters went from {320}bad to
worse in the Dutch captainships. His successors, a committee of
merchants, neglected the fortresses, and aroused the hatred of the
Portuguese sugar planters by their exactions, and though they sent home
an unparalleled amount of sugar and money for one year, it was the only
year they remained in office; for in 1645 the whole of the Portuguese
colonists in the Dutch captainships burst into insurrection. It was in
vain for the Dutch authorities to complain to Dom Antonio Telles da
Silva; he answered that it was not his fault if the Portuguese revolted;
they did not do so under his orders or directions; and the Portuguese
ambassador at the Hague made the same assertion in the name of the king.
Seldom has an insurrection been so rapidly successful; Antonio Moniz
Barreto and Antonio Teixeira de Mello speedily reduced the province of
Maranham, and João Fernandes Vieira, a self-made man and originally a
butcher’s boy, occupied the whole of the province of Pernambuco, and
drove the Dutch into their capital. The neglected fortresses were easily
taken, and soon the Dutch held no place, but the Recife. It was in vain
for Holland to declare war against Portugal, and to send great armaments
to Brazil; the national movement was too strong to be resisted; the
Dutch won some naval victories but could gain no fresh foothold in the
country, and in 1655 the island of the Recife was abandoned after a ten
years’ siege, and a King of Portugal once more reigned over the whole of
Brazil.
Great as was the triumph of the revolt in Brazil, it at first filled the
heart of the King of Portugal with{321} alarm, for it deprived him of an
ally in Europe on whose valuable assistance he had firmly relied.
Everywhere he looked in vain for help. Sweden could do nothing; England
was torn by civil war; and in France his ally, Cardinal Richelieu, had
been succeeded as supreme minister by Cardinal Mazarin. John IV.
instinctively felt that he could not depend upon Mazarin, who would
certainly throw him over, if a peace should be made between France and
Spain, and in his despair he made an offer to resign his throne to a
French prince, who should bring ample assistance from France. The nature
of this offer is best told in a letter from Mazarin to the Duke of
Longueville, dated October 4, 1647. “The King of Portugal,” wrote the
Cardinal, “after having maturely considered the state of affairs, is
disposed to resign his crown and retire to the Azores, and to offer his
kingdom to any one whom the Queen of France shall select, believing
himself strong enough to have such a person recognized as king and
obeyed by all the people of Portugal. He only desires that the person
selected should be a prince who may expect powerful help from France,
and that he shall have the means to make such an alliance with his
eldest son, as may eventually secure the succession of the kingdom to
the latter. He proposes M. the Duke of Orleans and Mademoiselle, or M.
the Prince, or you and your daughter.”[29] This strange offer of
abdication came to nothing, and it may well be doubted if John IV. would
have had the power to introduce a foreign prince in this way; and if he
had{323}{322} succeeded, Mazarin would have abandoned Portugal with equal
certainty even if a French prince had been on its throne. Though this
scheme failed, John IV. still hankered after help from France; he
offered his daughter, Donna Catherine de Braganza with a large dowry
both to the Duke of Beaufort and to the young Louis XIV., and he also
promised large sums of money to the avaricious cardinal for his own use.
Years passed on, occupied with these various schemes and entreaties for
assistance, and it was not until John IV. threatened to make peace at
any price with Philip IV. that Mazarin’s trusted agent, the Chevalier de
Jant, signed an offensive and defensive alliance with Portugal on
September 7, 1655.[30]
JOHN IV.
(From a Print of the Period.)
This behaviour of France did not seriously concern Portugal so long as
the war between France and Spain continued to occupy the chief strength
of the Spanish armies; but on all sides, John IV. saw that he was
regarded abroad as a temporary monarch, ruling only until Spain had an
opportunity to crush him. From England he could get no help; Cromwell
showed his contempt for him and for the received principles of
international law, by ordering the trial and execution of Dom Pantaleone
de Sá, a lad of nineteen, and the brother of the Portuguese ambassador
Rodrigo de Sá, for murder and riot in London;[31] and his refusal to
surrender Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice in 1650 to Admiral Blake,
caused that{324} gallant admiral to capture his ships and pillage his
colonies. On the other hand, the people of Portugal stood staunchly by
their legitimate monarch. Brazil recognized his authority and sent him
what help she could; the Indian and Chinese possessions contributed what
they could in money, and his great admiral Dom Salvador Correa de Sá e
Benevides defeated several Spanish fleets, and conquered Angola and the
former Portuguese possessions on the African coast.
In the midst of these perplexities, expecting daily to hear of the
conclusion of a peace between France and Spain, which should leave the
latter power free to crush him, King John IV., the first king of the
House of Braganza, died on November 6, 1656. His eldest son Dom
Theodosio, whom he had created Prince of Brazil, had predeceased him in
1653, and his heir was a boy of thirteen, weakly both in body and in
intellect. John IV. was not a great man; he is no more to be compared
with John “the Great” than the victory of Montijo is to that of
Aljubarrota; but his name and accession mark a great event. Hesitating
and undecided by nature, all his strength came from his queen; but for
her, he would never have been king of Portugal. But the revolution which
placed this mediocre man upon the throne is both interesting and
important; it shows how impossible it is for a nation which has once
been great to acquiesce in the loss of its independence. The heroic age
of Portugal was indeed past, but the victory of Montijo and the
insurrection in Brazil show that the people had recovered from the
inertness and sloth which had permitted Philip II. to establish the
power of Spain{325} over them. The struggle with Spain was not concluded;
the hardest part of the contest was to come, yet the people, if not
their chosen monarch, never dreamed of failure. New and national
institutions arose under the direction of João Pinto Ribeiro to take the
place of the effete institutions of the Sixty Years’ Captivity; councils
of war and the colonies were organized at Lisbon; ships were built and
armies raised; new tribunals such as the “Junta do Commercio” were
erected. Nor were men of letters backward in encouraging the revival of
independence; Francisco de Sá de Menezes the poet, Antonio Vieira the
preacher, and Jacinto Freire de Andrade, the biographer of Dom João de
Castro, all showed the spirit of patriotism, and it is not unworthy of
notice that the first Portuguese newspaper, the Gazeta de Lisboa was
established in 1641. The whole course of the Revolution of 1640 shows
that the people of Portugal in the seventeenth century were not unworthy
of their ancestors, and that they had learnt much, because they had
suffered much, during the “Sixty Years’ Captivity.”
{326}
XV.
THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE.
THE death of John IV., and the accession of the boy Affonso VI., proved
to be anything but a disaster to the House of Braganza. The queen became
sole regent, and this energetic and able woman, who had always been the
courageous supporter of her weak husband, determined to prosecute the
war against Spain with redoubled vigour. She, too, hankered after a
close alliance with France, and distrusted the promises of Mazarin; but
she felt that it was no good to wait for allies until Spain was at
liberty to attack her, and now ordered the Portuguese army to take the
field. Hitherto, since the battle of Montijo, the war had languished,
and had been confined to skirmishes on the frontier, but the
queen-regent determined to renounce this policy and to invade Spain. Her
enterprize was not crowned with success, and the siege of Badajoz which
she attempted resulted in failure and defeat. It was obvious that the
Portuguese army, though full of gallant and loyal soldiers, was quite
undisciplined and unfit for any serious operation of war. This being the
case, the{327} queen got her ambassador at Paris, the Count of Soure, to
engage Frederick, Count Schomberg, the most famous military adventurer
of his time, to enter her service, and to bring with him eighty officers
and four hundred non-commissioned officers, to organize and discipline
the Portuguese army. Schomberg, whose strange fate it was to serve under
nearly every leading monarch in Europe, and to die an English duke at
the battle of the Boyne, gladly accepted the queen’s offer. Like the
Count of Lippe-Buckeburg and Marshal Beresford in later days, he found
that the Portuguese made excellent soldiers, brave and amenable to
discipline, and the result of his labours appeared in the great victory
won by Dom Antonio Luis de Menezes, Count of Cantanhede, over the
Spaniards under Don Luiz de Haro, at Elvas, on January 14, 1659.
CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA.
(From an Engraving by Faithorne.)
This victory, though it revived the courage of the Portuguese, who had
been much depressed by their repulse at Badajoz, in one way injured the
cause of Portugal, for it so incensed Don Luiz de Haro that, during the
famous conferences on the Island of Pheasants with Mazarin, which led to
the signature of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, he would not listen
to any intercession on behalf of the Portuguese, and insisted on the
insertion of a secret article in the treaty, that France would promise
to abandon them entirely. Neither Mazarin nor Louis XIV. intended to
observe this secret article and to give up the advantage of having such
a useful ally in the peninsula to use against Spain, and they
accordingly looked about for some{329}{328} means to evade it. Mazarin again
sent the trusty Chevalier de Jant to explain to the queen-regent that
the seeming desertion of Portugal was rather nominal than real, and that
the little kingdom would not be left to bear the whole brunt of the war
with Spain. The means was found in 1660 by proposing that Charles II.,
the newly restored King of England, should marry the Donna Catherine de
Braganza. This notion was acceptable to all parties. Mazarin and Louis
XIV. would thus assist Portugal without breaking their promise to Spain;
Charles II. would get some ready money, and would repay the debt of
gratitude he owed for the shelter afforded to Prince Rupert and Prince
Maurice. The Earl of Clarendon saw the advantage of the alliance in
establishing the influence of England in the peninsula and in India; and
the queen-regent was promised the help of a powerful army of English
veterans, trained in the Great Civil War, whom Clarendon was anxious to
get out of the country, and also the aid of England in making peace with
the Dutch. Thus all parties were satisfied, except the King of Spain,
who protested vehemently, and his Catholic Majesty offered to give a
dowry to any Protestant princess whom Charles II. might select, if only
he would give up this Portuguese alliance. These protests were in vain.
The strong wills of Louis XIV., Lord Clarendon, and the queen-regent of
Portugal were all set upon the marriage, and Francisco de Mello, Count
da Ponte, was sent to London, and Sir Richard Fanshaw, the translator of
the “Lusiads,” was sent to Lisbon to arrange the preliminaries. These
were soon settled,{330} and on May 18, 1661, the marriage was announced to
the English Parliament. Catherine de Braganza was to bring as her dowry
the town of Tangier in Morocco, the island of Bombay, and the town of
Galle in Ceylon, as well as £800,000 in money; while on his side Charles
II. promised to force the Dutch to make peace with Portugal, and in
consideration of a further sum of £30,000 a year to send an army of not
less than three thousand veterans to aid in the war with Spain. These
liberal terms were approved in Parliament in spite of the religion of
the Portuguese princess; and in April, 1662, the Earl of Sandwich
arrived in the Tagus with twenty English ships to take the bride to
England. The marriage took place on May 31, 1662, and it was thus, upon
the suggestion of the King of France, that the first step was made
towards the revival of the old alliance between England and Portugal,
which had existed under the kings of the House of Aviz, an alliance
which was, in the indignant language of later French writers, to make
Portugal a province of England.
Before the English soldiers arrived and the final struggle with Spain
commenced, a Court revolution took place in Lisbon. The king, Affonso
VI., was now nearly nineteen, and he had grown up a debauched and
vicious youth. A stroke of paralysis had disordered his intellect, and
his mother, absorbed in the cares of government, had left him too much
to servants. He was entirely under the influence of his valet, a young
man named Conti, and his chief delight was to range the streets of
Lisbon at the head of a troop of mulattoes and negro slaves, and to
play{331} pranks of which the English “Mohocks” of the eighteenth century
would have been ashamed. The queen-regent, in disgust, banished Conti to
Brazil, and two accomplished courtiers, Sebastião Cesar de Menezes,
Count of Atouguia, and Luis de Sousa e Vasconcellos, Count of Castel
Melhor, persuaded the angry young king to declare himself of age on June
21, 1662, and to take the government into his own hands. The queen
retired into a convent, and all power fell into the hands of the two
conspirators.
Fortunately for Portugal the two counts were energetic and able
statesmen, and they pursued in every point the policy of the queen.
Castel Melhor formed the English veterans, who had arrived under the
command of Murrough O’Brien, first Earl of Inchiquin, some French and
German volunteers and mercenaries, and the newly organized Portuguese
levies, into a powerful army, of which Schomberg was the real, though
not the ostensible, commander-in-chief. With this army a series of
victories were won, which caused Affonso VI. to be surnamed Affonso “the
Victorious,” though his own successes, such as they were, were confined
to the streets of Lisbon. On June 8, 1663, the Count of Villa Flor, with
Schomberg by his side, utterly defeated Don John of Austria, an
illegitimate son of Philip IV., at Ameixial, and afterwards retook
Evora; on July 7, 1664, Pedro Jacques de Magalhães defeated the Duke of
Ossuna at Ciudad Rodrigo; on June 17, 1665, the Marquis of Marialva and
Schomberg destroyed a Spanish army under the Marquis of Carracena, at
the battle of Montes Claros; and Christovão de Brito Pereira{332} followed
up this victory with another at Villa Viçosa.
These repeated successes utterly broke the power of Spain in the
peninsula, and peace was only a matter of time, when Castel Melhor
decided to increase both his own power and that of Portugal by marrying
the king, who was a mere tool in his hands, to a French princess. Such
an alliance was highly approved by Louis XIV., who believed it would
bring Portugal under his influence, and the bride selected was Marie
Françoise Louise Elisabeth, Mademoiselle d’Aumâle, daughter of Charles
Amadeus, Duke of Nemours, and Elisabeth de Vendôme, and grand-daughter
of Henry IV. of France. She was brought to Portugal by her relative, the
Cardinal d’Estrées, and the marriage was celebrated at Lisbon with the
greatest pomp in 1666. But instead of increasing his power, the great
minister, Castel Melhor, found that this union brought about his ruin.
The handsome and accomplished young queen could not but loathe her
worthless and degraded husband, and she speedily fell in love with his
younger brother, Dom Pedro, the Duke of Beja. Her passion was returned,
and after fourteen months of an unhappy married life, the queen suddenly
left the palace for a convent, and applied for a divorce on the ground
of non-consummation to the chapter of the cathedral church of Lisbon.
Her action was followed by a Court revolution, and Dom Pedro shut King
Affonso up in a portion of the palace, and assumed the regency on
November 23, 1667. Every one rejoiced at the overthrow of the vicious
king. The measures of Dom{333} Pedro were universally approved by the people
of Lisbon, and on January 1, 1668, he was recognized as regent by the
Cortes. The great minister, Castel Melhor, was not prosecuted, and was
allowed to retire to Paris, and the young prince, who was not yet
twenty, took the government of Portugal into his own hands.
The regent immediately hurried on the negotiations for a peace with
Spain, which had been commenced under the directions of Castel Melhor,
by the Earl of Sandwich and Sir Richard Southwell, the English
ambassadors at Madrid and Lisbon, and on February 13, 1668, the long
war, which had lasted for twenty-seven years—ever since the small band
of conspirators in Lisbon had proclaimed King John IV.—was formally
concluded. By the Treaty of Lisbon, Spain solemnly recognized the
independence of Portugal, and gave its sovereign the title of “Your
Majesty,” which had never been acknowledged even to Emmanuel and John
III., and in return Portugal ceded Ceuta, in Morocco, to the King of
Spain. This diplomatic success was followed on March 24th by the grant
of a divorce to the queen, who, on April 2nd, with the dispensation and
blessing of the Pope, married the regent Dom Pedro. The wretched Affonso
was sent to the Azores, and a new era of peace and prosperity commenced
for Portugal. The regent was fully convinced of the necessity of peace
and economy, in order to restore the prosperity of the kingdom after its
long struggle with Spain. He reduced the army, and dismissed all the
foreign soldiers, and he set to work to make improvements in{334} every
department of administration. The treasury was empty, and the country
was miserably poor. Agriculture had been neglected during the long war;
the Dutch and English had seized upon the Asiatic trade; the Indian
possessions were worth little or nothing; and the only source of
revenue, except taxation, was the wealth of Brazil. Yet Dom Pedro had
the wisdom and self-restraint not to increase the taxes, or press too
heavily upon the sugar and tobacco planters of his great dominion in
South America, and he preferred to reduce the expenses of his household
to the lowest possible amount. In all his endeavours he was assisted by
his wife, and it was no wonder that the Portuguese people loved and
reverenced their prudent rulers.
The only event of importance during the regency was the plot of Dom
Pedro Francisco de Mendonça and Dom Antonio de Cavida to restore Affonso
VI. to the throne, in 1674. It was fortunately discovered in time; the
ringleaders were executed, and Affonso VI. was removed from the Azores,
where he had been trying to make a party, and established at Cintra,
where he died in 1683. The regent then ascended the throne as Pedro II.
and added the title of “king” to the power he had enjoyed for fifteen
years; but in the same year he lost his wife, for whose sake he had
overthrown his brother. His reign was marked by the same characteristics
as his regency; and his strict economy and maintenance of peace gave an
opportunity for the exhausted country to recover. He was an excellent
administrator, not only from inclination, but from a desire to be
independent of the Cortes,{336}{335} which he summoned as seldom as possible,
and never after the arrival of the first consignment of gold from
Brazil. In his foreign policy he made a point of remaining on good terms
with both France and England, and he refused to interfere in the
internal affairs of Spain. His friendship with England was kept up
through his sister, Catherine, who, by his instructions, kept herself
aloof from ministerial quarrels, and remained quietly in her adopted
country after her husband’s death, all through the stormy reign of James
II. and the Revolution of 1688, and who did not return to Portugal until
1692. With France he was more wary, for he feared the ambition of Louis
XIV., and was apprehensive of the danger to Portugal which the accession
of a Bourbon prince to the throne of Spain might cause.
PEDRO II.
(From a Print in the British Museum.)
The vacancy, which would be caused by the death of Charles II. of Spain,
and the general scramble which seemed likely to take place for his
dominions, were of more importance to King Pedro II. of Portugal, than
to William III. of England, or Louis XIV. of France. He felt that he was
utterly unable to cope with any of the great powers, and he commenced
saving money for the general war which was certain soon to break out. In
1687, at the request of his minister and most intimate friend, the Duke
of Cadaval, he consented to marry again, in order to have an heir to the
throne. He selected for his second wife Maria Sophia of Neuburg,
daughter of the Elector Palatine, greatly to the chagrin of Louis XIV.,
who hoped he would have chosen a French princess; and by her he had four
sons. When the{337} death of Charles II. became an event daily to be
expected, he proclaimed his intention of remaining neutral, and refused,
in consonance with the traditions of the House of Aviz, to be himself a
candidate for the Spanish throne. Nevertheless, he increased his navy,
placed his army on a war footing and repaired his fortresses, and in
1699, he had the pleasure of receiving the first important consignment
of gold from Brazil, amounting to a ton and a half, which proved to him
that he had a new source of revenue more productive than any taxes he
could impose at home.
At last, on November 1, 1700, Charles II. of Spain died, and Louis XIV.
in accepting the throne for his grandson, made his famous declaration,
“There are now no longer any Pyrenees.” King Pedro carried his
complaisance so far as to acknowledge Philip V., as king of Spain, and
he even sheltered a French fleet under the Count de Chastenau in the
Tagus, against the assaults of the English admiral, Sir George Rooke.
But he soon saw that, as he feared, it was impossible for him to remain
neutral, and the insolence of Cardinal Porto Carrero, who spoke of him
to King Philip as “the rebel duke of Braganza,” and the information that
there was a secret treaty, which promised French help for the
subjugation of Portugal, made Pedro II. decide to enter into a yet
closer alliance with England. This was exactly what the great Whig
ministry wanted, and, in 1703, the Right Honourable John Methuen was
sent to Lisbon with full powers to negotiate a political and commercial
treaty with Portugal.
On December 27, 1703, the famous Methuen treaty{338} was signed, by which
Portuguese wines might be imported into England at a lower duty than
those from France and Germany, in return for a similar concession to
English manufactured goods. The immediate result of this treaty was that
King Pedro acknowledged the Archduke Charles, the English candidate, as
King of Spain, and that he gave the English a base of operations in the
peninsula. The ulterior result was that Englishmen in the eighteenth
century drank port wine instead of claret and hock, while the Portuguese
imported everything they wanted beyond the bare necessaries of life from
England. This was an advantage to both nations, for Portugal is
eminently an agricultural country with neither the teeming population
nor the materials necessary for manufactures, while England obtained a
friendly province from which to import the wine and produce of a
southern soil, and a market for the sale of the products of her
manufactories. The close connection thus formed went deeper than mere
commerce; it established a friendly relationship between the two
peoples, which was of infinite advantage to the smaller nation. At
Lisbon a regular English “factory” was established, and at Oporto a
large colony of English wine merchants and shippers carried on business
operations, which doubled the prosperity of the beautiful city on the
Douro. The steady influx of English capital increased the wealth of
Portugal, and the vineyards of the Entre-Minho-e-Douro became proverbial
for their prosperous and industrious peasantry; while, on the other
hand, the importation of English goods gave means of comfort and
luxury{340}{339} to the Portuguese people which distinguished them in the eyes
of all travellers of the last century from the Spaniards and Italians.
To this day the beautiful porcelain from the famous English works at
Worcester and Derby, Chelsea and Bow, is to be found in Portuguese
cottages; and the English people have not lost their taste for port and
St. Michael’s oranges.
OPORTO. PRESENT STATE.
(After a Photograph.)
From a political point of view, the Methuen treaty assured the very
existence of Portugal; in all times of danger it could now count upon
the support of the great power whose interest it was to have an ally
from whose country it could act against Spain. On March 7, 1704, the
Archduke Charles arrived at Lisbon with a powerful English fleet under
Sir George Rooke, conveying ten thousand English troops under the
command of Henri de Ruvigny, Lord Galway. On April 30, Philip V.
declared war against Portugal, and the English advanced with a
subsidiary Portuguese army under the Count das Galveras and Diniz de
Mello e Castro. The campaign was successful; the allies took Salvaterra
and Valença, and Sir George Rooke surprised the important fortress of
Gibraltar. In the following year but little was done on the Portuguese
frontier, because the Archduke Charles had sailed round to Barcelona,
and King Pedro, who felt himself to be dying, gave up all active
interest in affairs, and made over the regency to his sister Catherine,
Queen-dowager of England. Had he been conscious he might have heard of
the great successes and reverses of the campaign of 1706. Lord Galway
and Dom João de Sousa, Marquis das Minas, advanced into Spain, and after
taking Alcantara,{341} Coria, Truxillo, Placencia, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Avila
in rapid succession, occupied Madrid on July 2, 1706. But they did not
remain there long; the Spaniards rose in arms for Philip V., and in
August, 1706, the allied army fell back as quickly as it had advanced.
Dom Pedro, however, remained unconscious of these stirring events; he
gradually sank, and died at Alcantara on December 9, 1706, leaving a
reputation of having been one of the best of the kings of Portugal. The
great interest of his reign is to be found in the gradual formation of
the English alliance, which is the clue to the Portuguese history of the
next century. It was commenced by the marriage of Catherine de Braganza
to Charles II., strengthened by the action of Lord Sandwich and Sir
Richard Southwell in making peace with Spain, and finally cemented by
the Methuen treaty, and it is curious to note that the first link in
this chain was forged by Louis XIV. and Mazarin in recommending the
marriage of Charles II.
It is important to observe the position of Portugal in Asia and South
America during the half-century which succeeded the “Sixty Years’
Captivity,” and to see how the despised discovery of Pedro Alvares
Cabral was to more than take the place of the vaunted Asiatic connection
commenced by the voyage of Vasco da Gama. The heavy blows struck by the
Dutch and English against the Portuguese monopoly of the Eastern trade
before the successful revolution in 1640, have already been noticed, and
the ruin of the Portuguese in Asia was consummated by the Dutch during
the long naval war which succeeded the attack upon their settlements in
Brazil. The China trade{342} had not attained very important dimensions, so
the Dutch left the Portuguese undisturbed at Macao, but they destroyed
their settlements in the island of Formosa, and the English absorbed
what trade there was by their factory at Canton. It was the spice trade
and the command of the Spice Islands, which the Dutch chiefly coveted,
and of which they obtained a monopoly, which they practically retain to
this day. After the foundation of Batavia, all the efforts of the Dutch
were directed against Malacca, which, though in a decayed state, was yet
mistress of no inconsiderable trade; twice they stirred up the Achinese
to attempt the conquest of Alboquerque’s famous settlement, but the
Portuguese beat off the natives, and it was not until 1640 that the
Dutch destroyed the rival of Batavia. The Portuguese made no further
effort to share the spice trade, and after the massacre of the English
at Amboyna in 1624, the more dangerous rivalry of the merchants of that
nation was also withdrawn. In India, the Dutch made a point of securing
the pepper trade only, and left the English to absorb that of the
products of Northern India, of the muslins of Dacca and the brocades of
Ahmadabad and Surat. The Portuguese repulsed the Dutch from Goa in 1639,
but these determined traders were not to be beaten; in 1662, in spite of
the peace which had been concluded by the intervention of England, they
took Cochin, the principal Portuguese station in Southern India, and by
1664 were masters of all the chief pepper ports on the Malabar coast.
They were equally successful in Ceylon, where they captured Jafnapatam,
the last important Portuguese port, in 1658;{343} and in 1669, they expelled
the Portuguese from the Coromandel coast likewise, and took S. Thomé and
Macassar. In Northern India the English were the most formidable rivals
of the Portuguese. After the capture of Hūglī by the orders of
Shah Jehān, the Portuguese dropped all communication with Bengal, and
the trade of that important province fell into the hands of the English.
On the other side of India, the English were equally successful. Their
victory off Surat had broken the prestige of Portugal, and the trade
with Gujarāt, Kathiawār, and Sind was chiefly in their possession.
So weak indeed had the Portuguese become, that Diu, the city
immortalized by the brave deeds of Antonio de Silveira and João de
Castro, was plundered by a band of Arabs in 1670; and Goa itself,
“Golden Goa,” was only saved from the Marāthas of Sambajì, the son of
Sivajì, by the timely aid of a Mogul army. On the other hand, the
Portuguese Jesuits won a reputation almost as great as that of the
Portuguese heroes; though the Inquisition still continued its horrid
work at Goa, there were nobler missionaries than the inquisitors, and
the name of João de Brito, who preached with unexampled success until
his cruel martyrdom in Madura in 1693, deserves to be ranked with that
of St. Francis Xavier himself. In Africa, the chief Portuguese ports
were re-conquered by Salvador Correa de Sá e Benevides in 1648, but they
were only of little value, since they had been maintained chiefly as
stations on the road to India, and not for purposes of African trade.
The Dutch made their resting-place at the Cape of Good Hope, which is
the reason why Mozambique was left to the{346}{345}{344} Portuguese; and they also
took possession of the rich island which had been first sighted by
Lourenço de Almeida, to which they gave the name of Mauritius, after
Prince Maurice of Nassau. On the western coast the Portuguese retained
Angola, the Cape Verde Islands, and their other possessions; but they
lost St. Helena to the Dutch, who held it until it was captured by the
English captain, Anthony Munden, in 1673, when it was made into a
station of the English East India Company. With their possessions in
Morocco, the Portuguese parted with the more willingness, since they
were only a source of expense; and the cession of Ceuta to the Spaniards
and of Tangier to the English was generally approved. Of Bombay the
other territorial cession made to England on the marriage of Catherine
de Braganza, little need be said, for though destined to become the
capital of western India, it proved at first of so little value, that in
1668 Charles II. granted it to the East India Company for ten pounds a
year.
SPECIMENS OF PORTUGUESE SILVER AND COPPER COINS.
| SILVER COINS. |
COPPER COINS. |
(1) A vintêm, 20 reis = about a penny.
(2) Half a tostaõ, 50 reis = nearly threepence.
(3) Three vintens = about threepence halfpenny.
(4) Tostaō, 100 reis = rather more than sixpence.
(5) Six vintens = about sevenpence.
(6) Twelve vintens, 240 reis = about one shilling and twopence.
(7) Crusado novo, 24 vintens = about two shillings and fourpence. |
(1) One-and-a-half-reis piece (Peter II., 1700) = less than half a farthing.
(2) Three-reis piece (Maria and Peter III., 1797) = less than a farthing.
(3) Five-reis piece (Maria Regina, 1799) = about a farthing.
(4) Ten-reis piece (Maria I., 1799) = a little more than a halfpenny. |
Very different from this tale of decay is the history of the Portuguese
in Brazil during the same period, and the comparison shows clearly of
how much greater value is a colony than a dominion conquered and held by
the sword. The loyalty of the Portuguese colonists was shown by their
expulsion of the Dutch with hardly any assistance from the home
government, and the bonds of kinship enabled the Portuguese to maintain
their power in South America without the establishment and maintenance
of powerful armies. Indeed, one of the most valuable lessons taught by
the history of the daughter country, is that{347} the less interference the
mother country makes in the affairs of its colony, the better it will be
for both countries. The material prosperity of Brazil in the seventeenth
century was due to the fact that during that period the colony was
essentially agricultural, and that there was therefore time for a large
and industrious population to collect, before gold was discovered in
large quantities. The production of tobacco and sugar was the staple
employment of the inhabitants, and the rapid development of these
resources caused the growth of a large fleet, not only to carry these
commodities to Europe, but to import the thousands of negro slaves, who
worked in the plantations. And it is here well to remark that at this
time the Portuguese settlers made no attempt to enslave the native
Brazilians, who were protected by the Jesuits and by edicts of the king,
but considered it perfectly just and right to make use of negro slaves.
This wise behaviour and the conduct of the Jesuits, who laboured
assiduously among the natives, placed them on friendly terms with their
conquerors, who soon began to intermarry with them. Owing to this
friendly relationship the interior of the continent was gradually opened
up, and at last gold was discovered in large quantities. It was
fortunate for the Portuguese that it had not been discovered before, for
otherwise they would certainly have lost their colony during the “Sixty
Years’ Captivity,” but at this time they were too strongly planted to be
expelled, and had besides the potent protection of the English navy. The
first discovery of gold on a large scale took place in 1699, and the
arrival of the first cargo at an opportune juncture{348} gave King Pedro the
means he required for setting his army on foot. It must be remembered
that at this time there were no Californian or Australian gold fields,
and that the discovery of gold in Brazil was of more importance than it
would be now. King Pedro prepared to work this source of wealth in a
prudent manner; he did not attempt to make the gold fields a royal
monopoly, which the independent inhabitants of the captainships would
not have allowed, but demanded one-fifth of the total registered yearly
export. This left enough profit for the gold searchers, and as the
yearly revenue of the crown of Portugal from this source was at least
£300,000, it may be imagined that the kings of Portugal were well able
to maintain a splendid court at Lisbon in spite of the loss of the
Asiatic trade. No story is more interesting than this growth of Brazil
into the most valuable possession of Portugal; the land, which was at
first inhabited by convicts, surpassed in wealth the dominion won by the
noblest sons of the country.
{349}
XVI.
PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL.
THE eighteenth century exhibits fewer features of interest than any
other throughout the whole history of Portugal. The country remained in
a political sense a mere province of England, and was bound by the
Methuen treaty to take a part in all the wars in which England was
engaged, and the importance of this arrangement became more and more
evident, when France and Spain were united by the close connection
brought about by the “Pacte de Famille.” The commercial relation was the
cause of more intimacy between the people of the two nationalities than
the political alliance, for it brought, as has been said, English
merchants and English capital into Portugal. But notwithstanding this
double bond of union the two allies remained entirely separate. The
Portuguese remained a race of bigoted Catholics, and the English made no
efforts to convert them. This difference of religion prevented any close
alliance between the reigning houses of the two countries, such as had
been brought about by the marriage of{350} Charles II. to Catherine of
Braganza, for any marriage with a Catholic princess would have been
rejected by the statesmen and the people of England. While therefore
existing as an independent nation under the protection of England,
Portugal maintained its own national characteristics, and remained in
other respects more like Spain than any other country. The little state
was no longer in the vanguard of the march of European civilization; it
felt that its great days were past, and was content to remain in
stagnant quiet. For this reason, if for no other, the story of Portugal
loses its interest in the eighteenth century, for it was illustrated by
no great feat of arms, no national revolution or advance of national
progress, and it was at this time that in every point of view, literary
as well as political, it fell behind the other European nations. It was
inevitable that it should be so; a nation which depended on another for
its political independence, was not likely to produce heroes. It is
strange that the influence of English example did not give rise to a
movement for political freedom and representative institutions, but it
was not so; the monarchy remained absolutist and was prevented from
needing the support of the people by the wealth it derived from the gold
and the diamond mines of Brazil, and the Cortes was not once summoned
throughout the century. Yet this absolutism was not an unmixed evil, for
it produced a great minister, the Portuguese Richelieu, in the Marquis
of Pombal.
The reign of John V., the eldest son of Pedro II., who at once assumed
the royal power from the regent Catherine, was, though it commenced in
war, remarkable{351} for the long continuance of peace. The War of the
Spanish Succession was still raging in the peninsula, and the first
campaign after the accession of the new monarch was marked by the great
defeat inflicted on the English and Portuguese by the French and
Spaniards at Almanza, on April 15, 1707, a battle in which it chanced
that the English were commanded by a Frenchman, Henri de Ruvigny, Lord
Galway, and the French by an Englishman James Fitz-James, Duke of
Berwick. Nevertheless John V., who was a young man of seventeen, in
spite of this disaster, kept true to the English alliance and the
Methuen treaty, and left the management of affairs in the hands of his
father’s minister and friend João de Mascarenhas, Duke of Cadaval. This
able statesman bound the king more surely to the Anglo-Austrian alliance
by marrying him to the Archduchess Marianna, daughter of the late
Emperor Leopold I., who was escorted to Lisbon by a powerful English
fleet under Admiral Sir George Byng, in 1708. The war continued,
however, to go steadily against the allies, for the Spaniards had
rallied enthusiastically around their Bourbon king, Philip V.; and on
May 7, 1709, a Portuguese army under the Marquis of Fronteira was
defeated on the banks of the Caia, by the Spaniards under the Marquis de
Bay. Far more serious was the capture of Rio de Janeiro, by the French
admiral, Duguay-Trouin, on September 23, 1711, which cut off all
supplies from Brazil for more than a year. The war languished all over
Europe after the accession of the Archduke Charles as Emperor, and on
February 6, 1715, nearly two years after the treaty of Utrecht,{352} peace
was signed between Spain and Portugal, at Madrid, by the Secretary of
State, Diogo de Mendonça, Count of Corte-Real.
As soon as John V. began to mark out a policy for himself, after the
death of the Duke of Cadaval, he showed his distaste for war. He refused
to join in the war against Cardinal Alberoni, the famous minister of
Spain, and avoided as far as possible any combination which might lead
to the rupture of peace. The only expedition he sent out was a fleet,
which he equipped at the Pope’s bidding to join the Venetians in their
struggle against the Turks, and which, under the command of Lopo Furtado
de Mendonça, Count of Rio Grande, defeated the Mohammedans off Cape
Matapan in 1717. The main effort of King John’s foreign policy was to
combine a firm adherence to the Methuen treaty with friendly relations
with Spain, by which he hoped to avoid war. For this purpose he always
kept on the best of terms with the English ambassadors at Lisbon,
notably with Lord Tyrawley; and in 1729 he closely allied himself with
the new dynasty in Spain. His daughter, Donna Maria Josepha de Braganza,
was married to Don Ferdinand, eldest son of Philip V., who succeeded to
the throne of Spain as Ferdinand VI.; while the Spanish infanta, Donna
Marianna Victoria de Bourbon, was married to the heir-apparent of
Portugal, Dom Joseph. With the papacy John V. remained on the best of
terms; he lent enormous sums of money to successive popes out of the
wealth of Brazil, and in return received rewards, which were of no real
value, but which were such as he highly esteemed. Lisbon was divided
into{353} two dioceses; the Archbishopric of Lisbon was erected into a
patriarchate; the patriarch was allowed to officiate in vestments
resembling those of the Pope, and his canons in imitation of those of
the cardinals; and, finally, in the last year of his reign, the title of
“Fidelissimus,” or “Most Faithful,” was conferred upon the kings of
Portugal, to correspond with those of “Most Christian” and “Most
Catholic,” attributed to the kings of France and Spain respectively.
These are the only points of interest, which mark John V.’s long reign
of forty-four years, and as the last thirty-five of these years were
years of peace, it may well be said, happy is the reign which has but
little history. But it must not be thought that he therefore left no
impression upon his country. On the contrary, he did much to imprint his
name on its history. He showed a tendency, like so many other princes of
the eighteenth century, to imitate Louis XIV. He spent much money in
building, and among his most famous efforts in this direction are the
patriarchal church at Lisbon, the superb convent at Mafra, and the great
aqueduct which still supplies Lisbon with water. He was a munificent
patron of literature and the arts, and founded the Academy of History at
Lisbon in 1720. He loved music and the theatre, and spent great sums in
importing singers and dancers from Italy and actors from France. He took
an intelligent interest in the administration of his kingdom, and for
the better despatch of business formed three secretaryships of state for
the home, foreign and war, and colonial and naval, departments instead
of one, and he took a particular pride in his{354} navy, and founded the
naval arsenal of Lisbon. One other fact also may be recorded to his
credit, that in 1725 he obtained a Bull from Pope Benedict XIII.,
allowing all prisoners of the Inquisition to employ counsel to defend
them, and ordering that all sentences of the Holy Office should be
communicated to and confirmed by the king in council. This excellent
monarch had a paralytic stroke in 1742, and for the last eight years of
his reign, until his death in 1750, the kingdom was governed by the
queen, and the Cardinal da Cunha, Patriarch of Lisbon.
The reign of King Joseph, which lasted from 1750 to 1777, is made famous
by the administration of the Marquis of Pombal, the greatest minister
who ever ruled Portugal, and one of the greatest of eighteenth-century
statesmen. The king, though a man of real ability himself, interfered
but little in politics, and left the management of affairs entirely in
the hands of the minister, whose greatness he was the first to perceive.
The relationship between the monarch and his subject resembles that
between Louis XIII. and Richelieu, and does honour to both parties. In
everything—in his great internal administrative reforms, in his
financial schemes, in the reorganization of the army, in the abolition
of slavery, and in the struggle with the Jesuits, which ended in the
suppression of that famous order—King Joseph supported his minister.
Pombal broke the power of the nobility, and made the king more absolute
than ever, and he exalted the royal prerogative, while using it for his
measures of reform; while, in return, the king maintained the minister
in power, in spite of the vehement{355} protests and wily intrigues of the
Roman Catholic clergy, and the opposition of his wife.
Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, better known by his later title of
the Marquis of Pombal, was a man of more than fifty years of age when
his patron succeeded to the throne, and he himself entered office. His
father, Emmanuel de Carvalho, was a country gentleman of moderate
wealth, but by his mother, Theresa de Mendonça, he was related to some
of the noblest families of Portugal, to the Almeidas, the Mellos and the
Mendonças. He was born at Soure, on May 13, 1699, and after receiving
his education at the University of Coimbra, he entered the army as a
private. He found neither pleasure nor profit in a military career in
time of peace, and after leaving the service, he led the life of a man
about town in Lisbon. His handsome face, great bodily strength, and
proficiency in athletic exercises, made him popular in all circles of
society in the capital, in spite of his comparative poverty, and he
especially distinguished himself, if distinction it may be called, among
the “Mohocks,” who infested the streets of Lisbon. There seemed no
prospect of his ever making any mark in life, when in 1733 he made
himself the talk of the town by his elopement with, or rather his
abduction of, a lady of the highest rank, Donna Theresa de Noronha,
niece of the Count of Arcos. His wife’s family were at first most
indignant, but at last they relented, and in 1739 the bravo of the
streets of Lisbon was, by their influence, appointed ambassador to the
Court of England. It is some consolation for men of advanced years to
remember that the greatest of Portuguese{357}{356} ministers was forty years of
age before he ever received official employment. In London Sebastião de
Carvalho turned over a new leaf, and devoted himself to the serious
study of politics, and he carefully investigated the English system of
government and the causes of England’s commercial prosperity. From
London he was removed to the Court of Vienna in 1745, and he there
married, on the death of his first wife, a daughter of Count Daun, the
famous Austrian general. On this occasion King John V. was pleased out
of compliment to the victor of Kolin, to grant Sebastião de Carvalho
letters of nobility, which entitled him to the prefix Dom; and in 1750
the ambassador was recalled to Portugal and appointed Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs. While he was on his way home John V. died, and when
Carvalho reached Lisbon King Joseph had already ascended the throne.
THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL.
(From a Print in the British Museum.)
At first the new Secretary of State held no higher rank than his
colleagues, but his abilities soon became evident to the king, and his
conduct at the time of the great earthquake of Lisbon gave him unbounded
ascendency over the mind of the monarch. This terrible catastrophe took
place on November 1, 1755. The population of the city was collected in
the churches listening to the solemn services of All Saints Day, when
the first shock of earthquake was felt; it was followed at intervals by
three others, which laid half the city in ruins. Most of the unfortunate
people, who managed to escape from the falling houses and churches,
rushed to the quays. But the disturbance affected the sea also; an
immense{358} tidal wave swept the quays, and washed off thousands of the
fugitives, while the ships in the river were driven on shore. No element
of horror was missing, for fires broke out in all parts of the wrecked
city, and the scum of the populace rushed hither and thither, murdering
and robbing those whom the calamities of nature had spared. At this
fearful juncture the king and Carvalho showed the greatest courage and a
most unshaken firmness of demeanour. To the demands of the monarch as to
what was to be done, the minister answered laconically, “Bury the dead
and feed the living,” and for eight days and nights he lived in his
carriage, driving from place to place, whithersoever his presence was
needed, and repressing disorder. The news of the disaster spread all
over Europe; at least thirty thousand people, according to some accounts
one hundred thousand people, lost their lives, and foreign nations were
not backward in assisting the remnant of the people of Lisbon. In
England the pity felt was keener than anywhere else, owing to the close
relationship between the two nations, and large sums of money and great
quantities of provisions were promptly despatched from London to
Portugal. The catastrophe made an extraordinary impression on the minds
of all contemporaries; in London over twenty accounts were published
within the year, apart from notices in magazines, and Voltaire in his
“Candide” gave a full and, on the whole, very accurate description of
it.
Carvalho’s energy at this time established his reputation with the king,
and he felt able to commence his campaigns against the nobility and the{359}
Jesuits. In order that he might have his time free for matters of such
importance he was made Prime Minister in 1756, with power over all
departments of administration, and his friend, Luis da Cunha, was
appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his place. Of his
long series of administrative reforms, and his efforts to improve the
condition of the country, which were spread over his government of
twenty-seven years, it will be better to speak as a whole; but a special
description must here be given of his campaign against the Jesuits,
which brought about the suppression of that famous order. It is not
necessary to speculate on the various motives, which induced Carvalho to
attack the Jesuits, but the principal cause lay in the fact that they
were wealthy and powerful, and therefore a dangerous force in an
absolutist monarchy. It must be remembered that the Jesuits of the
eighteenth century formed a very different class of men to their
predecessors. They were no longer intrepid missionary pioneers, but a
corporation of wealthy traders, who made use of their spiritual position
to further the cause of their commerce. They had done a great work in
America by opening up the interior of Brazil and converting the natives,
and their administration of Paraguay, one of the most interesting
achievements in the whole history of Christianity, was without doubt a
blessing to the people. But by the middle of the eighteenth century they
had gone too far. It was one thing to convert the natives of Brazil, and
another to absorb much of the wealth of that country, in doing which
they prejudiced not only the Crown,{360} but the Portuguese people, whom
they kept from settling in the territory under their rule. Whether it
was a sufficient reason for Carvalho to attack the order because it was
wealthy and powerful, and had departed from its primitive simplicity, is
a question for every one to decide for themselves, but that this was the
reason, and that the various excuses alleged by the admirers of the
great minister are without foundation, is an undoubted fact. On
September 19, 1757, the first important blow was struck, when the king’s
Jesuit confessor was dismissed, and all Jesuits were forbidden to come
to Court. Carvalho, in the name of the King of Portugal, also formally
denounced the order at Rome, and Benedict XIV., the then Pope, appointed
the Cardinal de Saldanha, a friend of the minister, Visitor and Reformer
of the Society of Jesus. The cardinal did not take long in making up his
mind, and May 15, 1758, he forbade the Jesuits to engage in trade.
An attempt upon the king’s life, which shortly followed this measure,
gave the minister the opportunity he wanted for urging the suppression
of the famous society. The history of the Tavora plot, which culminated
in this attempt is one of the most mysterious affairs in the whole
history of Portugal, and from the many contradictory accounts which have
been published, it is almost impossible to arrive at the exact truth.
But it is certain that the Jesuits and the nobles had no reason to love
the king and his minister, and it is hardly to be wondered at that their
opposition resulted in violent measures. The great nobles had been
systematically deprived of all political{361} power since the accession of
King Joseph, for Carvalho, like Richelieu, distrusted them, and
preferred to employ men of his own rank in life or of bourgeois descent
in public business in preference to noblemen and their relations. The
three leaders of the plot were the Duke of Aveiro, a descendant of John
II., and one of the greatest noblemen in Portugal, the Marquis of
Tavora, who had filled with credit the post of Governor-general of
India, and the Count of Atouguia, a descendant of the gallant Dom Luis
de Athaide, the defender of Goa; but the heart and soul of the
conspiracy was the Marchioness of Tavora, a beautiful and ambitious
woman, who was bitterly offended because her husband had not been made a
duke. The confessor of this lady was a Jesuit named Gabriel Malagrida,
who is by some authors treated as a half-insane fanatic, and by others
as a dangerous intriguer, incensed by the attacks of Carvalho upon his
order. Whether Malagrida was innocent or guilty, whether he was mad or
sane, whether the Tavoras were incited by religious or political
motives, or merely by a desire for private revenge, whether all these
noblemen, and especially the Duke of Aveiro, were not merely accused in
order to allow Carvalho to strike a blow at the nobility, whether,
finally, all those who were punished were victims of the minister or
really guilty, are questions which cannot be determined here. The
evidence on all sides is most contradictory, and all that is certain is
that the king was fired at and wounded on the night of September 3,
1758; and that in the following January, the three noblemen who have
been mentioned, the Marchioness{362} of Tavora, Malagrida with seven other
Jesuits, and many other individuals of all ranks of life, were arrested
as implicated in the attempt to murder. The laymen had but a short
trial, and, together with the marchioness, were publicly executed ten
days after their arrest.
King Joseph certainly believed that the real culprits had been seized,
and in his gratitude he created Carvalho, Count of Oeyras, and
encouraged him to pursue his campaign against the Jesuits. On January
19, 1759, the estates belonging to the society were sequestrated; and on
September 3rd, all its members were expelled from Portugal, and
directions were sent to the viceroys of India and Brazil to expel them
likewise. The news of this bold stroke was received with admiration
everywhere, except at Rome, and it became noised abroad that a great
minister was ruling in Portugal. The elder Pitt, who was anxious that
Portugal should join in the Seven Years’ War, publicly acknowledged the
ability of the Count of Oeyras, and at his demand apologized for the
infraction of the law of nations, which had been committed by the
English Admiral Boscawen’s attack upon the French squadron under La
Clue, in the Portuguese harbour of Lagos.
The Count of Oeyras had no desire to take part in the general war raging
in Europe, and refused to accede to Pitt’s wishes, until the King of
Spain, according to the arrangement of the “Pacte de Famille,” attacked
Portugal, as being a declared enemy of the Franco-Spanish alliance owing
to the Methuen treaty with England. The Spaniards under the Marquis of{363}
Sarria invaded the northern provinces of Portugal in 1762, and captured
in rapid succession the towns of Miranda, Braganza, and Almeida. Then
the Count of Oeyras appealed to the English statesman, and not in vain.
English soldiers and munitions of war were at once despatched to Lisbon,
and, at the special request of the minister, a general in English pay,
the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg, with some English officers and sergeants,
were sent to reorganize the Portuguese army as Schomberg had done in the
century before. The Count of Lippe, assisted by the energy of the
Portuguese minister, quickly formed the Portuguese troops into a
disciplined army, and on the arrival of Brigadier-General John Burgoyne,
a gallant cavalry officer, who had distinguished himself at Belle-isle,
but who is better known in English history from his surrender at
Saratoga, to take command of the English troops, the allied army
advanced. They were uniformly successful; the Spaniards lost all their
former advantages; they were defeated at Valencia de Alcantara, where
the English took three standards and a Spanish general; and on October
5th Burgoyne stormed the entrenched camp of Villa Velha, and ended the
campaign. The Spaniards were now quite ready to give in, and on February
10, 1763, peace was signed between Portugal and Spain. The Count of
Oeyras had learnt a lesson from the contrast between the two campaigns,
and when Burgoyne and his English soldiers returned to England, the
Count of Lippe-Buckeburg was requested to remain, and he not only
reorganized the Portuguese army, but put all the Portuguese fortresses
on the Spanish frontier, and{364} especially Elvas, in thorough repair,
according to the received ideas of fortification.
On the conclusion of this short war, the Count of Oeyras once more
turned his attention to the Jesuits, and in 1764 the Jesuit priest
Malagrida was burnt alive, not as a traitor, but as a heretic and
impostor, on account of some crazy tractates he had written. The man was
regarded as a martyr, and all communication between Portugal and the
Holy See was broken off for two years, while the Portuguese minister
exerted all his influence with the Courts of France and Spain to procure
the entire suppression of the society, which he hated. The king
supported him consistently, and after another attempt upon his life in
1769, which the minister as usual attributed to the Jesuits, King Joseph
created his faithful servant Marquis of Pombal, by which title he is
best known to fame. The prime ministers of France and Spain cordially
acquiesced in the hatred of the Jesuits, for both the Duc de Choiseul
and the Count d’Aranda had something of Pombal’s spirit in them, and
imitated his policy; in both countries the society, which on its
foundation had done so much for Catholicism and Christianity, was
proscribed, and the worthy members treated with as much rigour as the
unworthy; and finally in 1773 Pope Clement XIV. solemnly abolished the
Society of Jesus. King Joseph did not long survive this triumph of his
minister, for he died on February 24, 1777, and the Marquis of Pombal,
then an old man of seventy-seven, was at once dismissed from office.
BULL FIGHT.
(From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne,” &c. La Haye, 1720.)
To analyse the internal reforms and general{365} measures of improvement
introduced into Portugal by Pombal is almost impossible in a single
paragraph, so far-reaching were his endeavours, so unlimited his energy.
He has often been compared with Richelieu, chiefly, it seems, because of
his rigorous suppression of the Tavora plot; but the men whom he really
resembled were the benevolent despots and their ministers who abounded
in Europe before the outbreak of the French Revolution. He firmly
believed that the greatest happiness of a people depended upon the
maintenance of an absolutist monarchy, which could do more good than
representative institutions, and his struggle with the Jesuits was
mainly due to the fact that they were so wealthy and independent,
especially in Brazil, as to hamper the power of the Crown. The class of
statesmen and politicians to which he belonged included such monarchs as
Frederick the Great of Prussia, the Emperor Joseph II., Leopold, Grand
Duke of Tuscany, and Charles III. of Spain, and such great reforming
ministers as Aranda in Spain and Tannucci in Naples; and like them he
believed that real good could only be done by an absolute monarch, who
had the interests of his people at heart. The greatest evidence Pombal
gave of this royal concern for the people was in the famous decree of
May 25, 1773, by which slavery was abolished in Portugal, or rather by
which grandsons of slaves, and all children of slaves born after that
date, were declared free, and which at the same time abolished all
distinctions between “old” and “new” Christians, by which latter term
the descendants of the converted{367}{366} Jews and Mohammedans were still
called, and made all Portuguese subjects alike eligible for civil,
military, and ecclesiastical offices. In Brazil, however, he made no
attempt to put down slavery, believing, like all his contemporaries,
that negroes were made on purpose to be slaves; but even there he
repeated and enforced the edicts against making slaves of the natives of
the country. In matters of internal administration he advocated and
maintained efficiency and economy, and at one blow in 1761 he swept away
more than three-quarters of the petty offices which hampered the
administration of justice. The law courts were made accessible, and
lawsuits cheap; and in 1769 he robbed the Inquisition of its power by
making it an open and public court, subject to the rules which regulated
other courts. In matters of police he showed the same vigour, and by
stern repression prevented the machinery of the law from being used to
further private revenge. He recognized the importance of education, and
reorganized the University of Coimbra in 1772 by abolishing the teaching
of the dark ages which still continued there and introducing the modern
element; and though he expelled the great teaching order of the Church,
he maintained the educational establishments of the Jesuits, and turned
their college at Lisbon into a school for the training of the young
nobility. Of the reforms in the army, which he carried out with the help
of the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg mention has already been made, and he
was equally energetic with regard to the navy, over which department he
placed the most energetic of his subordinates, Martinho de Mello e{368}
Castro. Nor was the great minister careless of more material affairs; he
showed a taste for architecture and building; under his superintendence
the part of Lisbon which had been ruined by the earthquake rose from its
ashes in redoubled beauty, adorned with fine streets, squares, and
buildings, generally designed by the famous Portuguese architect Joaquim
Machado de Castro. He did not neglect to encourage agriculture and
viniculture, which must ever be the source of livelihood of the greater
number of the Portuguese people, and he introduced the silkworm into the
northern provinces, and made special regulations for the management and
encouragement of the bold fishermen of the Beira and the Algarves. In
his attempt to introduce manufactures the Marquis of Pombal was not so
successful; the Portuguese are not a manufacturing people, and the
system of protection which he enforced only roused the opposition of
English merchants, who protested against it as a breach of the Methuen
treaty, and made manufactured articles dearer than they had been during
the first half of the century. Yet some of the native industries which
he established or protected were not unworthy of his care, and the
glass-works of Leiria, the lace of Vianna, and the potteries of Aveiro
enjoyed a great and deserved reputation. In commercial matters he showed
the result of the lessons he had learnt during his official residence in
London, for he founded the Royal Bank of Portugal in 1751, and
established the Oporto Wine Company, against which infraction of their
monopoly the English wine merchants loudly inveighed.{369} He encouraged
trade with Brazil by granting concessions to the gold seekers and
planters of that great colony; and the importation of gold, sugar, and
tobacco brought back to Lisbon some of the prosperity of the sixteenth
century. In Asia he was clear-sighted enough to perceive that any
attempt to contend for a share of the Indian or the spice trade was
bound to be of no avail; but he was the first of Portuguese statesmen to
perceive the value of the little settlement of Macao in the Canton
river. Most of the Chinese trade, which had been yearly growing in
value, was in the hands of the factory of the English East India Company
at Canton, but the jealousy of the Chinese Government was such that the
Company had no assured position there. But Macao was a free port; most
of the factors and writers of the East India Company resided there, and
Pombal, seeing that the tea trade passed through Portuguese territory,
greatly encouraged it, and took care that it should pay due toll to the
Portuguese authorities and contribute to the wealth of the Portuguese
Crown. Nor was the great minister insensible to literature and the fine
arts. He founded the “Arcadia de Lisboa” in 1757, for the propagation of
the teachings of the school of the French encyclopædists; and it was
under his influence and protection that Diogo Barbosa Machado compiled
his “Bibliotheca Lusitana” and Damião Antonio de Lemos wrote his
“Historia de Portugal,” a work which stands midway between the naïve
annals of Bernardo de Brito and Antonio Brandão, and the modern
scientific histories of Alexandra{370} Herculano and Rebello da Silva. Of
music he was particularly fond; he persuaded the king to build the opera
house at Lisbon, and to invite the famous singer Caffarelli, the
confidant of the King of Spain, to sing there, and to him was dedicated
the best Portuguese opera, the “Alessandre nell’ Indie” of David Peres.
Such were some of the reforms, schemes, improvements, and tastes of the
great minister; they made him the friend of his sovereign and the adored
of the people; but, on the other hand, his persecution of the Jesuits
and his rigorous treatment of the leading noblemen, whom he had often
imprisoned without trial, made him many personal enemies, and when his
patron died he knew that his own fall was at hand. King Joseph had died
without male issue, and was succeeded on the throne by his eldest
daughter, Donna Maria Francisca, who had married in 1760 her own uncle
Dom Pedro, a younger brother of King Joseph. By this arrangement it was
hoped that all disputes as to the accession would be avoided; the
husband and wife were crowned together, and coins were struck in the
joint names of Maria I. and Pedro III. Both the king and the queen were
feeble and weak-minded, and the reins of government fell into the hands
of the widow of King Joseph, Donna Marianna Victoria, a fanatical
Catholic who had always resented the influence of Pombal and opposed his
policy. By her advice the great minister was at once dismissed from
office and ordered to send in his accounts, while his enemies were
released from prison. Their names will show how powerful was the enmity
he had to expect, for among them were{371} Dom Miguel de Annunciacão, Bishop
of Coimbra; Dom João Amberto de Noronha, Count of San Lourenço; Dom João
de Almeida Portugal, Marquis of Alorna, a former Viceroy of India, and
brother of the Marquis of Tavora; Dom Martinho de Mascarenhas, son of
the executed Duke of Aveiro; Dom José, illegitimate brother of the late
king and Grand Inquisitor of Portugal; Antonio de Andrade Freire, the
Chancellor; Dom Frederico de Sousa Holstein; and Dom João de Braganza,
Duke of Lafoẽs. These men at once surrounded the new sovereigns and
gave utterance to complaints against Pombal; the proceedings in the case
of the Tavora plot were reversed, and the prosecution of the late
minister pressed on with bitter hostility. Yet his enemies hardly dared
to condemn such a benefactor to his country to any severe penalty, and
after being driven about from pillar to post for four years, the old
man, now more than eighty years of age, was condemned to be banished
twenty leagues from Court. Had his relentless persecutor, the widow of
King Joseph, been alive, his punishment would doubtless have been more
severe, and, as it was, the queen dared not pass such a light sentence
until after her mother’s death. The old minister did not long survive
his disgrace, and died at Pombal on May 8, 1782, at the age of
eighty-three. To the credit of Pedro and Maria let it be admitted at
once that in consideration of his father’s long and eminent services the
young Marquis of Pombal was fully confirmed in all the honours and
estates which had been conferred upon the minister by King Joseph.{372}
It need hardly be said that the fall of Pombal left many aspirants to
his high place. The three Secretaries of State, Martinho de Mello e
Castro, Thomas Xavier de Lima Brito, Viscount of Villa Nova de Cerveira,
afterwards Marquis of Ponte de Lima, and Ayres de Sá e Mello; the
Intendant of the Treasury, Pedro José de Noronha, Marquis of Angeja; and
the Intendant of Police, Diogo Ignacio de Pina Manique, had all been
trained in official work by Pombal, and were all eager to succeed their
master in power. None of them, however, were successful, for the great
nobles who had been recalled to Court were determined to have no such
supreme ruler again over them, while they were too jealous of each other
and too inexperienced in affairs to take office themselves. Matters went
on therefore at the commencement of the new reign much as they had done
under the management of Pombal; his spirit remained amongst the
ministers, and in such measures as the commercial treaty with Russia,
the lighting of Lisbon by oil lamps, and the abolition of imprisonment
for debt, the impulse he had given to all reforms is clearly to be seen.
The “Arcadia de Lisboa” was indeed allowed to disappear, but in its
place the Duke of Lafoẽs established the “Academia Real das
Sciencias” in 1779, which did even better work for literature by its
publication of the works of the early Portuguese chroniclers. In
carrying out these measures the king and queen had little share; Pedro
III. was a silly and vicious man, and Maria Francisca was a woman of
weak intellect, completely subservient to her confessor, Ignacio de San
Caetano{373} who found her greatest happiness in raising vast sums of money
and sending them to the Latin convent at Jerusalem. The only important
event in which they took a part was their conference with the Court of
Spain at Badajoz in 1785, when an arrangement was come to about the
disputed frontier in South America; and when Dom John, the second son of
Pedro and Maria, was betrothed to Donna Carlotta Joaquina,
grand-daughter of Charles III. of Spain. In the following year Pedro
III. died, and his death, followed as it speedily was by those of her
confessor and of her elder son, Dom José, who had married his aunt,
Donna Maria Benedictina, completely upset the small amount of intellect
possessed by Maria Francisca. It was observed in 1788 that she was quite
unfit to transact any business; and in 1792, when the progress of the
French Revolution was setting all Europe in a blaze, Dom John found it
necessary to take the management of affairs into his hands, though he
was not declared regent until 1799.
To turn from the history of Portugal in the eighteenth century to the
history of the Portuguese possessions in India is a melancholy task; for
these possessions instead of being a source of pride were a source of
expense and anxiety to the home government, and they were maintained
rather from a recollection of ancient greatness and as a base for
mission work than for any actual advantage derived from them. In 1739
Bassein, the “Capital of the North” as it was called, a city which had
been second only to Goa in commercial and political importance, was
captured by Chimnājī Apā, a{374} Marātha general, after a three
months’ siege, and with it fell Thana and all the possessions of the
Portuguese on the north-west coast except Daman and Diu. In 1741 the
Marāthas and the Bhonslās of Sawantwārī over-ran the country
round Goa and threatened the city, but in the moment of difficulty, the
Marquis of Louriçal arrived with twelve thousand men, and first defeated
the Marāthas at Bardez, and then made Khem Sawant, the ruler of
Sawantwārī, tributary. His successes were followed by those of the
Marquis of Castello Novo, who captured Alorna, Tiracol, Neutim, Rarim,
and Satari; and the Marquis of Tavora, who took Sadashivgarh.
But the Portuguese Government had no desire to make fresh conquests
which it would need fresh supplies of money from home to defend, and the
Count of Ega was ordered to surrender most of the conquered towns to
their former owners. Meanwhile commerce had entirely deserted the
Portuguese possessions, which were given over to the Church; and Captain
Hamilton in his travels, after speaking of the poverty of the Portuguese
inhabitants, says that he counted no fewer than eighty churches and
convents in Goa, and that there were no less than thirty thousand
priests in the city and territory. Revenue there was none, and the two
thousand European soldiers who defended the ancient capital of
Alboquerque had to be paid out of the Portuguese treasury. The last blow
was given to what little commerce still remained by Pombal’s suppression
of the Jesuits, and in 1759 “Golden Goa,” which had become unhealthy and
ruinous, was left to priests and{375} monks, and the seat of government was
removed to Panjim. Pombal, with his practical insight, saw that nothing
was to be made out of the Portuguese possessions in India, and spent all
his efforts in Asia in promoting the prosperity of Macao; and in 1794,
when Portugal was in difficulties in Europe, the Viceroy of Goa asked
for the protection of English troops, and Goa was garrisoned by the
English East India Company throughout the continuance of the great war
with France.
Very different was the history of Brazil during this century: while
India was a source of expense, Brazil was the great source of wealth to
the Portuguese treasury, and was to be the refuge of the royal family
when it became impossible for it to remain longer in Lisbon. Throughout
the century there was a steady influx of immigrants to Brazil from
Portugal, and the population of the great colony rapidly increased in
numbers. Most of these immigrants settled down as sugar or tobacco
planters, and the labour upon the plantations was completely in the
hands of the negro slaves, who were imported in vast numbers. The trade
in slaves was kept entirely in the hands of Portuguese merchants, in
spite of the efforts of the English slavers, and was not only looked
upon as a lucrative calling, but as the chief employment for the
Portuguese sailors. It was this trade alone which made it worth while
for the Portuguese Government to keep up its establishments on the coast
of Guinea, and Pombal encouraged it as the only means of supplying
Brazil with labourers. The slaves in Brazil were not treated unkindly;
their{376} masters were bound to feed them; and were not only allowed, but
were obliged to sell them their liberty, on the offer of a certain fixed
sum of money. These freed slaves and the mulattoes, who were very
numerous, often accumulated considerable wealth, and were treated as
citizens in every respect, except that they could not hold any civil or
municipal office. They were even enrolled as soldiers, but the mulatto
regiments were kept distinct from the European, and officered from among
the wealthy members of their own class. The native Brazilians were
treated even more favourably, and by the great decree of 1755 they were
not only forbidden to sell themselves as slaves, but were made citizens
in every respect, and allowed to receive their education at the
University of Coimbra. The importance of the discovery of gold in the
interior has been mentioned, and the revenue to the Portuguese Crown
from the king’s fifth, in spite of much fraud, was estimated at £300,000
a year. The opening up of the interior led, about the year 1750, to the
conquest of the Paulist Republic. This curious little state had been
formed round the city of St. Paul about the commencement of the
eighteenth century by fugitives from Brazil and from the more oppressive
Spanish Governments of Chile and Peru. The town was originally founded
far up in the heart of the virgin forests beyond the jurisdiction of the
Portuguese and Spanish officials, where the inhabitants led a wild,
romantic life, tempered only by lynch law. But by degrees the march of
civilization brought them in contact with the Portuguese Government, and
the discovery of diamonds in{377} the vicinity led to the suppression of the
little republic. This discovery of diamonds further increased the wealth
of the Portuguese Crown, and in addition to the royal right to every
diamond above twenty carats weight, the king was estimated to make an
income of £100,000 a year by a contract entered into with a syndicate of
English diamond buyers. Nor were other precious stones lacking, for
rubies, emeralds, and topazes were all discovered in such large
quantities in the latter half of the eighteenth century as to seriously
lower their price. The great colony was ruled most wisely; only a few of
the superior officers were sent from Portugal, and most offices were
filled from among the settlers themselves. It was not even found
necessary to send troops from Portugal, for a regular army of sixteen
thousand men, and a militia of over twenty thousand were easily raised
and paid in the country itself. The only troubles which beset the colony
were caused by the indefiniteness of its boundaries, and Portugal found
it necessary to yield much territory, which has since developed into
wealthy and prosperous republics to the encroachments of Spain. Its
importance was recognized by the title of Prince of Brazil granted to
the eldest son of the King of Portugal since the days of John IV., and
it became a safe refuge for the exiled royal family when events in
Europe made it necessary for it to fly from Lisbon.
In literature the Portuguese writers of the eighteenth century followed
and imitated the French authors of the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis
XV. instead of striving to develop the characteristics of{378} their own
nation. The “Academia Real de Lisboa,” the “Academia Real de Portugal,”
the “Arcadia de Lisboa,” and the “Academia Real das Sciencias,” which
succeeded each other at short intervals, were all attempts to imitate
the French Academy and its offshoots, and though they did good work in
encouraging research and rewarding literary endeavour, they failed, as
such institutions generally do fail, to produce great writers and
thinkers. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, before the
academies exercised their influence, the only literary productions in
Portugal were lyric poems of no great merit, which were much admired by
the members of numerous little literary clubs resembling the Italian
arcadias, and which were chiefly imitations of the forms of verse most
in vogue in France and Italy. But during the rule of Pombal a more
healthy spirit appeared; the works of the French encyclopædists and
their contemporaries were studied instead of tricks of versification,
and a new departure was made alike in poetry and prose. The new poets
did not confine themselves to lyrics; they attempted epics, dramas, and
eclogues, all more or less based upon an imitation of the French, but
yet possessing a more truly national ring than the lyrics of their
predecessors. All these poets were not lovers of Pombal; the great
minister was too heedless of hurting their susceptibilities and too
sparing of his pensions for that; and the best known among them, Antonio
Diniz da Cruz e Silva, who was termed the Portuguese Boileau, vehemently
attacked the great man after his fall. The influence{379} exerted by this
poet on the progress of Portuguese literature was, however, slight
compared to that of his successors, Francisco Manoel de Nascimento and
Manoel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, whose followers under the names of the
“Filintists” and “Elmanists” preached freedom from the rigour of the
French canons of criticism, and adherence to national forms. Epic poetry
was not neglected, though none of its writers can compare with the great
Camoens, whose “Lusiads” were several times reprinted with notes during
this century. The fame of the great Portuguese epic was indeed spread
abroad throughout Europe; it was translated into French by Duperron de
Castera and by the French critic La Harpe; into Dutch by L. S.
Pieterzoon; and into English by Mickle who, as a translator of their
master-poet, was cordially received at the Portuguese Court in 1780. Nor
was the drama forgotten; the Portuguese stage was held by tragedies
after the French classical model, the subjects of which were generally
borrowed from the annals of the country, of which the titles of the
three tragedies of Du Bocage, “Viriato,” “Affonso Henriques,” and “Vasco
da Gama,” may be cited as a proof. In prose, the most valuable work was
done in history, and the editions of the old Portuguese chroniclers, Ruy
de Pina, Azurara, Fernão Lopes, and Acenheiro, edited for the “Academia
Real das Sciencias,” by José Correa de Serra still remain the standard
editions. Nor was science neglected in the country of Pedro Nunes;
Bartholomeu de Gusmão is asserted to have discovered ballooning in
1709,{380} years before the Montgolfiers commenced their experiments; and
the botanists Felix de Avellar Brotero and Antonio Correa da Silva, to
mention but one department of scientific activity, were well known
throughout Europe, and were members of most of the scientific societies
of the time. In the arts mention has already been made of David Peres,
the musical composer, and of Joaquim Machado de Castro, the architect;
the latter was in addition the best sculptor of his country, and
Domingos Antonio de Sequeira, as a painter, will compare favourably with
most of the contemporary artists in Europe.
But though the influence of France is to be perceived in every
department of literature until the revival of national poetry by
Nascimento and Du Bocage, the Portuguese people remained, owing to the
Methuen treaty, on much more intimate terms with the English. The royal
family might hanker after matrimonial alliances with Spain, a great
minister, like Pombal, might resent the absorption of Portuguese trade
by England; but, for all that, the people felt how close were their
bonds with the English nation. Mention has been made of the influx of
English capital, of the wine merchants of Oporto, and the English
factory at Lisbon, and also of the power exercised by the English
ambassadors. But there was a closer bond than that; Portugal became the
sanitarium for England; it was to Portugal that the seekers after a
milder climate resorted as they would now do to the Riviera, and it was
to Lisbon that the great English novelist, Henry Fielding, to mention
but one of many invalids, was sent; it was{381} in Lisbon that he died, and
he is buried in the cemetery of the English factory there. These were
the bonds that bound the two peoples together, and the Portuguese people
were justified in counting upon the armed help of England in the
terrible struggle which they were now to pass through.
{382}
XVII.
THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION—THE PENINSULAR WAR.
WHEN Dom John took the government of Portugal into his hands in 1792,
popular attention was concentrated throughout Europe on the progress of
the French Revolution. The interest excited in Portugal was as great as
it was everywhere else, for the ideas, which were at the bottom of the
most important movement of modern times, had been eagerly received in
the literary circles of Lisbon. It is absurd to suppose that there was
any great democratic party in the country, for as long as the
administration was well carried on, and taxes were not oppressive, the
mass of the people were absolutely indifferent as to the nature of the
government. It was different with regard to the more educated classes,
who had been brought up in the doctrines of the encyclopædists, and who
had read Rousseau and Diderot, Voltaire and Montesquieu. These men were
sceptical about the advantages of a benevolent despotism; they had
studied the history of their own nation, and knew that in former days,
before the discovery of gold in Brazil, the Cortes had been{383} frequently
summoned, and they desired that it should meet regularly, and that the
Portuguese people should once more take a part in legislation by means
of its old representative assembly. Some of them went further, and
inspired by the example of the great American Revolution, dreamed of a
republic, while others adopted all the fantastic political and social
ideas of Rousseau. But these men were mere theorists; they were to be
found only among a small circle of educated noblemen and bourgeois in
Lisbon and Oporto; and their fancies were quite unknown to the mass of
the population. These were the men who hailed with joy the capture of
the Bastille, and the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, and who
openly expressed their sympathy with the new order of things in France.
A PORTUGUESE MERCHANT, WITH HIS WIFE AND MAID-SERVANT.
(From Murphy’s “Travels in Portugal”, 1795.)
The government failed to understand that these sympathizers would not be
able to follow the example of the French revolutionary leaders, so long
as the general population of Portugal was contented and happy, and like
all the absolutist monarchs of Europe, Dom John heard with the utmost
horror of the events passing in Paris, and feared that they would be
imitated in Lisbon. In his terror of the spread of “French principles,”
he began to persecute their admirers although they had never dreamed of
acting or conspiring, and he thus made martyrs of the holders of the new
opinions, which were only propagated the more rapidly by his tyrannical
behaviour. In his crusade against the sympathizers with the French
Revolution, Dom John found his chief ally in Diogo Ignacio de Pina
Manique, the{385}{384} Intendant of Police, who believed that by his vigour he
should obtain the ascendency formerly held by Pombal, and who proceeded
therefore to work upon his master’s fears. His first measure was to
issue an edict against aliens, under which he expelled two Frenchmen,
Pierre Noel and Pierre Louis Fontaine, and kept a strict and irritating
surveillance over Edward Church, the United States Consul, and Jacome
Ratton, a merchant of Lisbon, whom he declared to be the fomenters of
discontent and the leaders of a conspiracy. Against Portuguese subjects,
Pina Manique acted with still more severity; Francisco Coelho da Silva,
the father of Portuguese liberalism, was thrown into prison; other men
of letters were suspected and often prosecuted, including the poets,
Nascimento and Du Bocage, the botanist Avellar Brotero, and the
historian Correa da Serra; many noblemen of liberal principles were
watched by spies, and the Duke of Lafoẽs, the great patron of
literature, was expelled from Court, because he was a friend of
Broussonet, the French chemist. The men whom the Intendant of Police
most abhorred were the Freemasons whom he hated, because their society
was secret, and by his attempt to suppress all their lodges he made them
actively democratic, and the chief promoters of “French principles.” It
was no wonder that this conduct excited attention in France, and when in
January, 1793, three months after the proclamation of the French
Republic, the Girondin deputy, Kersaint, inveighed against England in
the Convention, he abused Portugal also, and spoke of that country as a
province of England.{386}
Dom John, not satisfied with thus combating “French principles” at home,
believed it to be a holy duty to join in the general war against France,
and he therefore rejected the advice of the English ministry to remain
neutral, and sent his Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Luis Pinto
de Sousa Coutinho, to Madrid to beg leave to send an army to join in the
invasion of France. It need hardly be said that the Spanish minister,
the Count of Florida Blanca, was only too glad to accept assistance, and
a treaty of alliance between the two countries was signed at Aranjuez on
March 25, 1793. It was vain for the French revolutionary leaders to
protest that they had not injured Portugal and to ask for neutrality;
the French Ambassador, M. d’Arbaud, was ordered to leave Lisbon; a corps
of five thousand men under General João Forbes-Skelater was sent to join
the Spanish army in the invasion of Roussillon; and a squadron of eight
ships of war under the Marquis of Niza joined the English fleet in the
Mediterranean. The Portuguese contingent served gallantly in the Eastern
Pyrenees from November, 1793, to 1795, and shared alike in the success
of General Ricardos, and the defeats of General La Union and General
Urrutia, but nevertheless the Spanish Court under the influence of the
handsome but worthless guardsman, Godoy, did not hesitate to desert its
ally, and made a separate treaty with the French Republic at Basle in
July, 1795. Dom John began to believe that the war against the French
Republic could not be holy, since the Most Catholic king had made a
treaty with France, and he promptly sent Dom Diogo de{387} Noronha to Paris
to sue for peace. But the Committee of Public Safety had no idea of
making terms with him; the treaties signed at Basle had been part of a
deliberate policy, which was to convert Prussia and Spain into allies of
the Republic, and to unite all three against Austria, England, and
Portugal, which was regarded as a province of England, and the
Portuguese ambassador was dismissed immediately. After the Convention
ceased its long session and the Directory was appointed, Dom John made
another effort for peace, and sent Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo, the
head of what may be called the French party at the Court of Lisbon, to
Paris. He met with no better reception than his predecessor, and when
after the treaty of San Ildefonso, by which Spain declared war against
England in 1796, came the news of a secret convention between the French
ambassador at Madrid, General Pérignon, and Godoy, Prince of the Peace,
by which Portugal was to be divided between those two powers, and
Spanish troops were being massed upon the Portuguese frontier, the
English party in the Portuguese ministry gained the upper hand, and
urgent supplications were sent to England for help.
Pitt and Grenville were only too glad to comply; for they regarded
Portugal as affording an important base of operations in the peninsula.
The House of Commons voted Portugal a subsidy of £200,000; a force of
six thousand men was despatched under the command of Major-General the
Honourable Sir Charles Stuart, which deterred the Spaniards from
attempting an invasion, and the Prince of Waldeck,{388} like the Count of
Lippe-Buckeburg in former days, was sent to re-organize the Portuguese
army. This policy caused the French Directors to hesitate, and they
signed a treaty of peace with the Portuguese ambassador Antonio de
Araujo de Azevedo; but to their wrath and surprise, Dom John refused to
ratify the treaty, on which the Directors imprisoned the Portuguese
ambassador in the Temple. In the ardour of his alliance with England,
the prince for a year or two threw himself into the hands of the English
party at his Court, and on the death of Martinho de Mello e Castro, he
appointed Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, the leader of that party, to the
Secretaryship of State for the Marine and Colonies. Yet the English
party could not win the day entirely. The prince wavered; at his request
Sir Charles Stuart and the English army were withdrawn; and he made
another attempt to make peace with France through the mediation of
Spain. This was the situation of affairs when Dom John formally declared
himself Regent in 1799, as it became obvious that the Queen Maria
Francisca would never recover the use of her faculties; and in the same
year General Napoleon Bonaparte made his coup d’état of the 18th
Brumaire, and became ruler of France with the title of First Consul.
The accession of Napoleon to power was of no advantage to Portugal; from
the very first he showed his hatred of the little country; no amount of
submission could win his friendship; he persisted in regarding Portugal,
as the Convention, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Directory had
done, as a province of England; and he thoroughly understood{389} what an
important base of operations it afforded to the English armies. Hardly
was Napoleon firmly seated in office, when he despatched his brother
Lucien Bonaparte to Madrid in the year 1800 with directions to negotiate
with Portugal. He was to insist on the abandonment of the English
alliance, on the opening of Portuguese ports to France and the closing
of them to England, on the grant of special commercial advantages to
French merchants, on the extension of French Guiana to the Amazon, on
the cession of a part of Portugal to Spain until the recovery from the
English of Trinidad and Minorca, and on the payment of a large sum of
money, and he was authorized to offer Spain the assistance of French
troops if these hard terms were rejected. The Prince Regent did reject
them and declared war against Spain on February 10, 1801, and twenty-two
thousand French veterans at once entered the peninsula under the command
of Bonaparte’s brother-in-law, General Leclerc. The campaign was a very
short one; the French soldiers never came into action, but in the month
of May the Spaniards took Olivença, Juromenha, and Campo Mayor, laid
siege to Elvas, and defeated the Portuguese in two engagements at
Arronches and Flor da Rosa. The Portuguese sued for peace, and on June
6, 1801, a treaty was signed at Badajoz, by which Olivença and the
surrounding district was ceded to Spain, followed by another at Paris,
by which French Guiana was extended to the Amazon. Napoleon was very
dissatisfied with the peace of Badajoz, for he aimed at nothing short of
the extinction of the{390} independence of Portugal, and it was many months
before he consented to ratify the treaties. Meanwhile an English force
under Colonel Henry Clinton had occupied Madeira, and a force of the
English East India Company’s troops garrisoned Goa. The pride of the
people of Portugal was deeply wounded by the loss of Olivença, which had
been an integral part of Portugal ever since the days of Affonso
Henriques, and they lost no opportunity of showing their contempt for
the Prince Regent and his advisers. Their wrath was kindled against the
French, and from this time forth, the mass of the people who did not
care for politics, but who did understand the meaning of national
disgrace, was ready to dare anything against the nation which had
brought about the disintegration of the fatherland.
The Treaty of Amiens gave Europe a moment’s breathing space; the English
evacuated Madeira, and the Prince Regent determined on a policy of
absolute neutrality. But Napoleon was not to be moved; he had determined
on the destruction of Portugal, and it was with the full expectation
that he would irritate the Portuguese into declaring war, that he sent
General Lannes, one of the most courageous, but one of the roughest and
least educated of his generals, as ambassador to Lisbon. Lannes acted in
accordance with the expectations of his chief; he insulted the
Portuguese Court; he failed to observe the most ordinary customs of
diplomatic courtesy; and he finally demanded the instant dismissal of
all the ministers who belonged to the English party, and especially of
Pina Manique, the Intendant of Police, because he had in former days{391}
prosecuted the admirers of the French Revolution. The Prince Regent
obeyed, both from fear of France and dislike of the high-handed naval
policy of England; and Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo, the head of the
French party, became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with the
Count of Villa Verde, and the Viscount of Anadia as his colleagues, and
Lucas de Scabra da Silva succeeded Pina Manique. Even this humble and
prompt submission did not satisfy Napoleon, and in 1804 he replaced
General Lannes by General Junot whom he ordered to insist upon
Portugal’s declaring war against England. For a time, however, he
thought it wise to postpone his designs against the country, which he
regarded as the most vulnerable province of England, while he was
engaged in his great campaigns in Germany, and he even signed a treaty
of neutrality with the Portuguese Government. The English were not
inclined to submit to this, and in 1806, Admiral the Earl of St.
Vincent, General the Earl of Rosslyn, and General Simcoe were sent to
Lisbon to remind the Prince Regent of the ancient alliance between the
two countries, and to promise ample assistance if Portugal would declare
war against France. Dom John declined, and on the advice of his
ministers, treated the English ambassadors with something like contempt.
At length, in 1807, having defeated the armies of Austria, Prussia, and
Russia, Napoleon again turned his thoughts to his projects for the
annihilation of Portugal, which had become more than ever a thorn in his
side, since it refused to co-operate in his Continental System for the
commercial ruin of England.{392} He resolved at first to act with Spain and
Godoy, as Pérignon and Lucien Bonaparte had done, and on the 29th of
October, 1807, he signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, by which it was
agreed that Portugal should be conquered by the combined armies of
France and Spain, and that the northern provinces of the country should
be given to the King of Etruria, in exchange for his Italian kingdom,
which Napoleon desired to annex, while the southern districts were to be
formed into an independent kingdom for Godoy, Prince of the Peace, and
the central provinces were to be held by France. The signature of this
treaty was followed by immediate action. Junot moved rapidly across
Spain with a French army, and in conjunction with a Spanish force, under
General Caraffa, invaded Portugal along the line of the Tagus, while
General Taranco and General Solano, with two other Spanish armies
occupied the Entre Minho e Douro and the Alemtejo. With amazing rapidity
Junot accomplished his march, and the Portuguese people hardly realized
that war was imminent, until on the 29th of November, Colonel Le Cor
rushed into Lisbon with the news that French soldiers were in possession
of Abrantes. This alarming intelligence completely unnerved the Prince
Regent, who listened to the strongly-worded advice of Sir Sidney Smith,
the commander of an English squadron in the Tagus, to abandon his
capital for Brazil, and to leave the English to defend Portugal. Dom
John believed this the best course to pursue, and after naming a Council
of Regency, he went on board an English ship with his wife, Donna
Carlotta Joaquina, his two sons, Dom Pedro and Dom Miguel, his six{393}
daughters, and his unhappy mother, Queen Maria Francisca, whose
disordered brain seemed to understand what was going on, and whose
resistance to the efforts to remove her was painful to observe. The
English ships had hardly left their moorings in the Tagus, when Junot at
the head of two thousand wearied French soldiers, who had survived the
fearful fatigue of his rapid march, entered Lisbon on the 30th of
November, 1807.
MARSHAL JUNOT, DUKE OF ABRANTES.
(From a Print of the period.)
Nothing shows more certainly the great advance of what were called
“French principles”—that is to say, of democratic ideas—in Portugal
during the last few years, than the cordial reception which Junot
received. At Santarem he was welcomed by a deputation of the Freemasons
of Portugal, who had been made by persecution, as in other continental
countries, a secret society for the propagation of democratic ideas; the
army made no attempt to resist; neither villages nor towns rose in
insurrection; and the Council of Regency, which consisted of the Marquis
of Abrantes, the Marquis of Olhão, General Francisco da Cunha e Menezes,
General Francisco Xavier de Noronha, Principal Castro, and Pedro de
Mello Breyner, President of the Treasury, instantly submitted. The
people of Lisbon had been disgusted with the wavering and unpatriotic
policy of the Prince Regent; they complained with reason that he had
wasted time in diplomacy instead of preparing for defence; they
contrasted his yielding to Spain at the Treaty of Badajoz with the
gallant conduct of John I., and the successful wars of John IV.; and
they looked upon his departure for Brazil as a base desertion of{395}{394} his
country. For all these reasons they welcomed the French, and the
democratic leaders hoped that the Emperor Napoleon would annex their
country, and grant it representative institutions. Junot at first acted
with the greatest prudence; he certainly raised two millions of francs
in Lisbon by requisition, and seized all the money in the royal
treasury, but at the same time he gratified the Portuguese people by
refusing to give the Spaniards any of the plunder, and he encouraged
them in the belief that the Emperor would not destroy their
independence. His next step was to disband the whole Portuguese army,
and to quarter French troops in all the more important cities and
fortresses. Not satisfied with this, Junot then raised a powerful
Portuguese force, consisting of two divisions of infantry, two regiments
of çaçadores or light infantry, and three regiments of cavalry, which he
despatched to France under the command of Lieutenant-General Dom Pedro
de Almada, Marquis of Alorna, and Major-General Gomes Freire de Andrade.
This force which was known as the Portuguese Legion, contained all the
most disciplined officers and soldiers of the nation, and did gallant
service under Napoleon throughout the French campaigns in Spain,
Germany, and Russia, and the remnant of it served under his standards at
Waterloo. Thus freed from the presence of the most dangerous element of
resistance, Junot began to show his own disposition. He now made no
effort to conciliate the Portuguese democrats, and laughed at their idea
of a Portuguese constitution; he hoisted the tricolour flag on the
Citadel of St. George; he divided the country into{396} military governments
under his generals; and finally on the 1st of February, 1807, he issued
a proclamation “that the House of Braganza had ceased to reign.”
After issuing this proclamation the French took entire possession of
Portugal; the alcaides were dismissed, and the French generals ruled
with absolute authority as military governors. A new regency was formed,
which included several Frenchmen, notably Junot himself as president,
General Herman, M. Lhuillier, and Viennot de Vaublanc as
Secretary-General; and a new ministry was constituted of friends to the
French alliance, consisting of Pedro de Mello Breyner at the Home
Office, Azevedo at the Treasury, the Count of Sampaio at the War Office,
and Principal Castro at the Ministry of Justice. Junot then began to
intrigue for the throne of Portugal; he knew well that Napoleon had no
intention of carrying out the terms of the treaty of Fontainebleau; and
he did not see why, after his successful campaign, he should not receive
this great reward. He posed as a patron of letters, and was elected
President of the “Academia Real das Sciencias” in the place of the Duke
of Lafoẽs; he changed his attitude towards and made extravagant
promises to the radical party; and in the hope of succeeding the
Braganzas, he reduced Napoleon’s requisition of forty millions of francs
to twenty millions, on his own authority. The chief agent, through whom
he negotiated, was a lawyer, named José de Scabra, who got up a
deputation to visit Napoleon, headed by the Grand Inquisitor, the Bishop
of Leiria, to ask for the nomination of Junot as King of Portugal. These
efforts of Junot’s were, however, of no{397} avail. The tyranny of his
generals, and their treatment of the Portuguese as a conquered people;
the atrocities which the French soldiers committed, and their deliberate
insults to the dearest sentiments of a proud nation, far outweighed the
effect of Junot’s policy. General Thomières, for instance, plundered the
great abbey of Alçobaça, and destroyed the corpses of the early kings of
Portugal; and General Loison trampled on the people, and put down a
little riot at Mafra with most frightful cruelty. There were exceptions
to this behaviour of course. General Travot and General Charlot made
themselves popular by their just administration; but, as a rule, the
conduct of the French generals was rapacious in the extreme. At this
moment, when the Portuguese people were quivering with indignation, came
the news of the rebellion in Spain, and of the victory of Baylen. The
Spanish general, Bellesta, who commanded at Oporto in succession to
General Taranco, seized the French governor, General Quesnel, and handed
him over to a Portuguese junta, and then marched away into Gallicia. It
was on the 18th of June, when the French had held Portugal for about
nine months, that this great event occurred. Antonio José de Castro,
Bishop of Oporto, was declared president of the “junta” of that city.
The example was followed from Braga to Faro; everywhere the French
officers were murdered or expelled, and independent “juntas” were
formed. At this juncture the Portuguese people felt that they could not
resist France by their own strength; and the Bishop of Oporto appealed
to the old ally of Portugal, England, for assistance.{398}
PORTUGUESE PEASANTS.
(From Kinsey’s “Portugal Illustrated,” 1829.)
{399}
The English Government willingly listened to this appeal; they had long
wished for a base on the Continent from which to act against Napoleon by
land, and, in the words of Canning, “the arm of Great Britain became the
lever, and Portugal the fulcrum, to wrench from its basis the power that
had subdued the rest of Europe.” In the previous year, a force under
Colonel Beresford had occupied Madeira, but up to this time, no attempt
had been made to dislodge the French from Portugal itself. On the
receipt of this appeal from Oporto however, a small army, which had been
collected at Cork under the command of Lieutenant-General the Honourable
Sir Arthur Wellesley, for an expedition to South America, was ordered
instead to proceed to Portugal; reinforcements were collected at
Ramsgate and Harwich, and a division under Major-General Brent Spencer
was ordered to sail from Gibraltar to join him. A Lusitanian Legion was
also formed out of the Portuguese who happened to be in England, and
despatched to Portugal under the command of Colonel Sir Robert Wilson
and Colonel Mayne. It was indeed time that help should arrive; all the
best troops and most skilled officers had been sent out of Portugal in
the Portuguese Legion to join the Grand Army of France, and the
undisciplined peasants and apprentices hastily collected by the “juntas”
were easily defeated in many places by the French veterans. Sir Arthur
Wellesley landed at the mouth of the Mondego River, and advanced
southwards upon Lisbon. He first defeated Laborde’s division at Roliça
on the 17th of August, 1808; and, after receiving reinforcements, he{400}
routed Junot himself at Vimeiro on the 21st of August. These victories
were followed by the Convention of Cintra by which Junot agreed to
evacuate Portugal and surrender all the fortresses in his possession, on
condition that his troops and their plunder should be transported safe
to France. This convention, however disappointing from a military point
of view to the English authorities, was eminently satisfactory to the
Portuguese people, who saw themselves delivered from the French, as
speedily as they had been conquered by them.
The former Council of Regency, nominated by the Prince Regent before his
departure, was re-established at Lisbon, and at once began to quarrel
with the “junta” of Oporto, but both bodies perceived how dependent they
were on the English Government, and the Regency sent Domingos Antonio de
Sousa Coutinho to London to ask that an English ambassador with full
powers should be accredited to Lisbon, and that Sir Arthur Wellesley
might be appointed to reorganize their army. In compliance with these
requests the Right Honourable J. C. Villiers was sent as ambassador to
Lisbon, and, as Sir Arthur Wellesley could not be spared, Major-General
Beresford, who had learnt the Portuguese language, when governor of
Madeira, was sent to command and discipline the Portuguese troops.
Meanwhile, Portugal was again exposed to the attacks of the French; when
Sir John Moore advanced to Salamanca, he had left very few English
troops behind, and Napoleon ordered three French armies to invade the
country by different routes. Of these armies only one{401} actually entered
Portugal, that from the north under the command of Marshal Soult.
Parties of the Lusitanian Legion, under Sir Robert Wilson and Baron
Eben, made a spirited resistance, and even the unorganized Portuguese
levies, under General Antonio de Silveira, showed courage, if not
discipline; but their efforts were in vain, and Soult occupied Oporto.
Fortunately for the Portuguese, Soult, like Junot, was led away by the
idea of becoming King of Portugal, and did not advance on Lisbon, while
Lapisse and Victor did not support him by entering the Beira and the
Alemtejo, as they had been ordered to do, and this delay gave time for
Sir Arthur Wellesley to reach the Tagus with a powerful English army. On
the 12th of May, 1809, he drove Soult out of Oporto, and into Gallicia;
and after this success he invaded Spain, and defeated Joseph Bonaparte
and Marshal Victor at the battle of Talavera.
From these successes of the English general, it is necessary to turn to
the condition of the Portuguese regency. After the departure of the
Prince Regent, all the able men of the English party and the trained
administrators had left Portugal for Brazil; the leaders of the radical
party were either in disgrace, or had fled to France, and none were left
to compose the regency save a set of intriguers, whose chief idea was to
get as much money from England as possible, and convey it into their own
pockets. The Portuguese people acted very differently; they were
indignant at the outrageous conduct of the French soldiery, and were
ready to sacrifice their lives for the national cause. This enthusiasm
was reported to the English{402} Government, which determined to take ten
thousand Portuguese soldiers into English pay, and to send out a number
of English regimental officers to discipline and command them. No better
man than Beresford could have been selected as commander-in-chief of the
Portuguese army. He proved himself in after-years, and especially at the
battle of Albuera, to be but a poor general; but as an organizer his
firmness, which almost amounted to severity, made him at once obeyed and
feared. His chief assistants in this work were the English officers who
had been sent to him, and a small body of Portuguese officers whom
patriotism had forced into exile in preference to serving in the French
Portuguese Legion, and at the head of these two classes were his
Quartermaster-General, Major-General Benjamin D’Urban, an Englishman,
and his Adjutant-General, Colonel Manoel de Brito Mousinho, a
Portuguese. So hard did Beresford work during the winter of 1809, while
Lord Wellington, as Sir Arthur Wellesley had been created, was in Spain,
that in the spring of 1810, certain Portuguese regiments were brigaded
with the English, and showed themselves worthy of the honour. They
fought side by side with the English soldiers at the battle of Busaco,
and the behaviour of the 8th Portuguese Infantry is one of the most
disputed points in the history of that battle, every historian of the
war stating that it behaved well, but all differing as to the time it
came into action, and the effect of its bayonet charge.{403}
A FEMALE PEASANT FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CALDAS DA
RAINHA.
(From Kinsey’s “Portugal Illustrated,” 1829.)
While Beresford was doing this good work, and the flower of the
Portuguese youth was rushing to arms{404} in the regular army, or in the
militia reserve, the regency at Lisbon was going from bad to worse. The
Prince Regent at Rio de Janeiro had no control over it, and it was
divided into parties, which quarrelled over the disposition of the
English subsidies as if they were legitimate spoil. There is no need to
study the intrigues of these parties, but it is worth notice, that Dom
Pedro de Sousa Holstein, better known in after-years as the Duke of
Palmella, was despatched to the Spanish junta to claim the Regency of
Spain for Donna Carlotta Joaquina the Queen of Portugal, when Portugal
could not even defend its own territory. Neither Wellington nor
Beresford could work with this factious regency, and the English cabinet
had to insist that the English ambassador at Lisbon, Sir Charles Stuart,
the son of General the Honourable Sir Charles Stuart, should receive a
seat upon the council. His great ability and tact soon made him the
master of his colleagues, and a certain portion of the money, sent by
England to pay the Portuguese troops, did at last find its way to its
proper destination. The Regency, even when thus strengthened, failed to
become popular; it was hotly criticized and abused; and the murmuring
radical party in Lisbon, which hankered after peace with France, was
only suppressed by the deportation of eighteen leading journalists to
the Azores in September, 1810.
It is little wonder that some opposition to the war existed in 1810, for
in that year the most formidable invasion of French troops took place.
This was the famous invasion of Masséna. The Portuguese nation showed
all the valour of a people, fighting for its very{405} existence as a
nation, and when Lord Wellington, on being obliged to retire into the
lines of Torres Vedras, commanded the peasants to abandon their homes
and leave nothing for the French to subsist upon, they obeyed him with
touching fidelity. While Wellington was entrenched within his lines,
Beresford established his headquarters at Lisbon, and continued the work
of reorganization with the help of a fresh contingent of English
regimental officers, which reached him at this time. He proceeded
rapidly, but in regular order, and having organized and disciplined the
Portuguese regiments in the winter of 1809, he made them into
independent Portuguese brigades in the winter of 1810. In all he formed
a powerful Portuguese army of twelve infantry brigades, partly commanded
by English brigadiers, such as Ashworth, Pack, Bradford, and Archibald
Campbell, partly by native officers, such as Le Cor, Fonseca, Palmeirim,
and Bernadim Ribeiros, four cavalry brigades, under Povoa and Barbacena,
Madden and Hawker, and an artillery park of forty-eight guns under
Colonel Alexander Dickson. While Beresford was engaged at Lisbon in
organizing the Portuguese army, the Portuguese militia was doing good
work in the northern provinces, where the chief command was held by
Major-General Manoel Pinto Bacellar. Brigades of militia under such
dashing commanders as Antonio de Silveira, John Miller, Nicholas Trant,
and John Wilson, harassed Masséna’s lines of communication with Spain;
and while he was before the lines of Torres Vedras and at Santarem, he
had to keep three divisions employed in keeping open his line of retreat
and escorting{406} his convoys. In the field, the Portuguese militia was
always defeated, but Masséna could never feel safe from their attacks,
and to mention but one brilliant exploit, Trant’s capture of Coimbra
seriously inconvenienced him at a critical moment.
Finally in the March of 1811, Masséna had to retire, and the Portuguese
then reaped their reward in having their frontiers freed from the
invader for the rest of the Peninsular War. Englishmen of modern times
are too apt to look upon the victories of the Peninsular War, as the
results of English valour alone. Wellington knew better; he knew what he
owed to the Portuguese troops, and recognized their services in his
despatches; and contemporaries always spoke of the victorious soldiers,
as the allied, or the Anglo-Portuguese army. Throughout the great
campaigns of 1812, 1813, and 1814, the Portuguese troops, shared the
labours and the glories of Wellington’s army; and to mention but a
single exploit, the attacks of Pack’s and Bradford’s Portuguese brigades
on the Arapiles in the battle of Salamanca roused the warm admiration of
the English soldiers and officers though they were not crowned with
success. During the winter of 1812, while the allied army was in winter
quarters after the retreat from Burgos, Beresford put the finishing
touch to his work by the formation of independent Portuguese divisions.
The çaçadores or light infantry were however too valuable to be
separated from the English light infantry regiments, and continued to
form part of the famous Light Division until the close of the war. The
Portuguese divisions were like the brigades divided between English and{407}
Portuguese generals, among whom the most conspicuous were Sir John
Hamilton, and Sir Archibald Campbell, the future conqueror of Burma,
Carlos Frederic Le Cor and Agostino Luis da Fonseca. During the
movements which followed the victory of Vittoria, the Portuguese showed
their courage and discipline, and not only Wellington, but all the
historians of the war, draw attention to their good conduct alike in the
field and in quarters, as compared with the licentiousness and want of
discipline of the Spanish armies. Meanwhile, matters went on well at
home; the Regency, under the control of Sir Charles Stuart, was unable
to embezzle the English subsidies; he took care that the troops were
well paid, clothed, and fed; the Portuguese people rejoiced at the
achievements of their soldiers against France, and profited by the large
influx of English money into Portugal. When the war was over and the
news of the abdication of Napoleon, and of the battle of Toulouse
arrived, the returning troops were enthusiastically received, and all
promised brightly for the future. The English Government were not
unmindful of the services rendered by the Portuguese, and when
Wellington’s generals were raised to the peerage, Marshal Beresford, the
organizer of the Portuguese army, was created Lord Beresford, and Sir
Charles Stuart, the ambassador at Lisbon, Lord Stuart de Rothesay.
But these rejoicings were soon followed by bitter lamentations, for the
English plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Vienna headed by Lord
Castlereagh, basely deserted their gallant allies. The Portuguese{408}
envoys at this famous meeting for the re-settlement of Europe were Pedro
de Sousa Holstein, Count of Palmella, afterwards Duke of Palmella,
Antonio de Saldanha da Gama, afterwards Count of Porto Santo, and
Jeronymo Lobo da Silveira, afterwards Count of Oriolla. These
diplomatists urged that Spain should be forced to restore Olivença,
which Portugal had been obliged to cede at the Treaty of Badajoz in
1801, a claim which was perfectly fair and just; but Talleyrand opposed
this act of justice, and Castlereagh unjustifiably abandoned the
faithful ally of England, an act at once ungrateful and impolitic. A
feeling that England was ungrateful was the prevailing idea among the
Portuguese, when the news arrived from Rio de Janeiro that the mad Queen
Maria Francisca had died on March 20, 1816, and that the Prince Regent
had been proclaimed king as John VI.
{409}
XVIII.
MODERN PORTUGAL.
CIVIL WARS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT.
THE history of Portugal, after the conclusion of the Peninsular War,
affords a melancholy example of the evil effects of all prolonged wars.
The people, without great monarchs or great ministers, was divided into
many parties, which quarrelled and fought; numerous civil wars
distressed the country; commerce and agriculture were neglected; local
rivalry and class jealousy were allowed to grow to serious proportions;
the government of the country and the administration of justice went
from bad to worse; and, as usual, misery and poverty followed in the
train of political discontent. It is neither interesting nor instructive
to study the details of the civil wars of the first half of the
nineteenth century. Throughout the whole story of Portugal, the most
prominent feature is the singular tenacity with which the little country
maintained its independence and its individuality, and it is painful to
observe that this patriotic feeling almost entirely disappeared for a
time. It was during this period that{410} Portugal fell to the rank of a
third-rate state, for it now ceased to be an important factor in
European politics, either from its wealth and its colonies, or as the
trusted ally of England. This was largely due to a change in the
attitude of England, where the old historical friendship for Portugal,
which had been maintained since the Middle Ages and had been of
advantage to both parties, was abandoned, to the lasting regret of every
one who values the existence of sentiment and of historical continuity
in politics. Nevertheless, in spite of its loss of importance, some
account must be given of Portugal during this distressing epoch; for, if
it is interesting to study the history of a nation in prosperity, it is
also instructive to see how it fell to its lowest depths.
John VI. had greatly enjoyed the peace and comfort of his residence in
Brazil as Prince Regent, and he had become more attached to Brazil than
to Portugal, when he was proclaimed King of Portugal, Brazil, and the
Algarves in 1816. The people of the mother country resented this
heartily; they looked upon him as a deserter; and feared that he would
favour the interests of the colony unduly. They were also alarmed at the
growing spirit of independence in Brazil; they knew that the chief
wealth of Portugal during the eighteenth century had been derived from
its great colony, and they were well aware that any separation would be
most prejudicial to their prosperity. The affection of the new king for
Brazil appeared in the very first year of his reign, for instead of
insisting on the restitution of Olivença, he preferred to attack the
former possessions of Spain in South{411} America, and ordered to Brazil a
corps of 4,500 veterans of the Peninsular War under the command of
Lieutenant-General Le Cor. A pretext for war was found in the republican
movement of Artigas; the local militia could make no stand against the
Portuguese soldiers; on the 20th of January, 1817, Le Cor took Monte
Video, and he soon occupied all the country up to the left bank of the
River Plate. The victorious general was created Baron of Laguna, and
continued to occupy the Banda Oriental until 1825, when the inhabitants
rose in rebellion, and after much warfare they founded the Republic of
Uruguay, and became independent alike of Brazil and the Argentine
Republic.
John VI. gave colour to the accusation of the Portuguese that he
intended to desert them for the Brazilians, and invert the position of
the two nations, by his obstinate refusal to leave Rio de Janeiro. The
English Cabinet persistently urged him to return to Europe, but he
remained deaf to all remonstrances, and paid little or no attention to
the state of affairs in Portugal. He met with no help, but only with
opposition from his queen, Donna Carlotta Joaquina, who was always
intriguing against him, and who had, as early as 1805, promised a
liberal constitution to certain Portuguese radical leaders, in order to
build up a position distinct from her husband. Nor had she intrigued
only in Portugal, for in 1812 it was discovered that she had formed a
scheme to become independent Queen of Brazil. All these plots were
intended for the eventual advantage of her younger son, Dom Miguel, an
arrogant youth, who was commonly{412} believed to be illegitimate. Nor was
John VI. more happy in his relations with his elder son, Dom Pedro, who
was a fanatical admirer of the system of parliamentary government. Dom
Pedro was further Grand Master of the Freemasons of Brazil, and an open
supporter of the Brazilian party, which hoped for a liberal constitution
and complete separation from Portugal. This prince was a man of real
ability, high character, and enlightened opinions, and his importance in
the family was increased by his marriage, through the negotiations of
Dom Pedro de Menezes Coutinho, Marquis of Marialva, and Prince
Metternich, with the Archduchess Maria Josepha, daughter of the Emperor
Francis I. of Austria.
In Portugal, the government of the Regency had grown intensely
unpopular, for Lord Stuart de Rothesay and Marshal Beresford ruled most
despotically. The people which had endured the authority of the English
during the terrible war for existence, and the very soldiers who had
served so gallantly under English officers on the field of battle, soon
grew weary of foreign rule in time of peace, and raised the cry of
“Portugal for the Portuguese.” The ministers, who had reluctantly paid
the large sums needed for the expenses of the army, even when aided by
subsidies from England, now that those subsidies were withdrawn,
insisted on great reductions, and practically paid nothing at all.
Democratic ideas spread swiftly; the people claimed a share in the
government, and expressed aloud their hatred for the king, the Regency,
and the English, and a spirit of discontent arose in every part of the
kingdom. The first outbreak took{413} place in 1818, when General Gomes
Freire de Andrade, who had commanded the Portuguese Legion in the
Russian and other campaigns in Napoleon’s army, and who was an ardent
lover of France, planned a “pronunciamento,” but the plot was discovered
and suppressed with stringent severity by the Regency, which ordered the
execution of the general and of ten of his partisans. This rigorous
punishment only enraged the radical party, and when Beresford went to
Brazil in 1820 in order to get money from the king to pay the arrears
due to the army, advantage was taken of his absence by the people of
Oporto to raise the standard of revolt under the leadership of Colonel
Antonio de Silveira, Brito da Fonseca, and other officers belonging to
the garrison. The Regency in Lisbon, deprived of the presence of
Beresford, gave way before a similar rising in the capital, headed by
the Counts of Resende, Penafiel, and Sampaio, and the revolutionary
juntas formed in the two great cities agreed to act in harmony. The
English officers were driven from the country; Beresford was not allowed
to land when he returned from Rio de Janeiro; a fresh regency was
proclaimed; and a constituent assembly was summoned to draw up a
constitution for Portugal.
This assembly, of which the majority consisted of men of the most
democratic opinions, at once abolished all relics of feudalism, and, to
the disgust of the ecclesiastics, suppressed the Inquisition in
Portugal, in spite of its studied moderation in recent years, on account
of its former misdeeds. The deputies then proceeded to draw up a most
impracticable constitution for the{414} future government of the country,
which showed that they had studied the glowing speeches of the orators
of the French Revolution, and had not profited by the knowledge of their
mistakes. By this constitution, which was known in later history as the
“Constitution of 1822,” protection of person and property was
guaranteed; and liberty of the press, equality before the law, the
admissibility of all citizens to all offices, the abolition of
privileges and the sovereignty of the nation were proclaimed. One freely
elected chamber was to be summoned yearly to make laws and superintend
the government of the country, and the king was granted only a
suspensive veto over its measures. On hearing of this revolution,
Prussia, Austria, and Russia withdrew their ambassadors from Lisbon, and
England insisted that John VI. should at once proceed to Portugal. The
king accordingly left Rio de Janeiro and returned to Lisbon, where he
solemnly swore to observe the new constitution, and to rule for the
future as a constitutional monarch. The queen and Dom Miguel were not so
complaisant; they refused to recognize the constitution, and were at
once forced to leave Lisbon. On the departure of John VI., Brazil
declared itself independent, and Dom Pedro, who was elected emperor,
granted that country a liberal parliamentary constitution. The
Portuguese troops and royal vessels made a slight attempt to preserve
the royal authority in South America, but the latter were speedily
defeated by Lord Cochrane, who entered the Brazilian service, and the
separation of the great colony from its mother-country became an
acknowledged fact.{415}
The loss of Brazil and the conversion of the government of Portugal into
a limited monarchy, enraged the nobility, and still more the clergy, who
looked with horror on the radical reforms of the constituent assembly,
and when the French invaded Spain in 1823 to suppress the rebellion in
that country, General Francisco de Silveira, Count of Amarante, raised a
“pronunciamento” in the Tras-os-Montes against the Constitution of 1822.
John VI. had imbibed some of his elder son’s ideas, and was in favour of
modifying the absolute character of the Portuguese monarchy, but he
never concealed his opinion that the radical party had gone too far in
its extreme reforms. He therefore took advantage of the “pronunciamento”
in the north to declare the Constitution of 1822 abrogated, and
appointed the Count of Palmella prime minister, with instructions to
form a “junta,” and to draw up a moderate and well-balanced
parliamentary constitution on the English model. But the absolutist
party, headed by the queen and Dom Miguel, who had been appointed
commander-in-chief of the army, would not tolerate any form of
constitutional monarchy; they raised an insurrection in Lisbon against
John VI.; the king’s greatest friend, the liberal-minded Marquis of
Loulé, was assassinated; Palmella and his colleagues were imprisoned;
and the king himself was shut up in his palace and eventually fled for
refuge on board an English man-of-war in the Tagus. The united action of
the foreign ambassadors and ministers accredited to Portugal, led by Sir
William A’Court, afterwards Lord Heytesbury, the representative of
England, secured the restoration of{416} the king’s authority; the
insurrection was suppressed; Dom Miguel was banished; Palmella was
re-appointed prime minister; and at the close of 1824, the king returned
to Brazil to spend his last days in peace. On reaching Rio de Janeiro,
he recognized Dom Pedro as Emperor of Brazil, and on the 6th of March,
1826, John VI. died in the country of his choice. By his will, John VI.
left the regency of Portugal to his daughter Isabel Maria, to the
disgust of Dom Miguel, who had fully expected in spite of his conduct
that Portugal would be in some manner bequeathed to him, and that Dom
Pedro would be satisfied with the government of Brazil.
The next twenty-five years are the saddest in the whole history of
Portugal. The establishment of the system of parliamentary government,
which now exists, was a long and difficult task; it is almost impossible
to follow the rapid sequence of events, and quite impossible to
understand the varying motives of different statesmen and generals. The
keynote of the whole series of disturbances is to be found in the
pernicious influence of the army. Beresford’s creation was a grand
fighting machine, but armies, and more particularly generals, after a
long period of active service, are almost certain to become dangerous in
times of peace. In the case of Portugal, the army was disproportionately
large for the size and revenue of the country; there was no foreign or
colonial war to occupy its energies, and the soldiers would not return
to the plough nor the officers retire into private life.
The English Cabinet at this juncture determined to{417} maintain peace and
order, and in 1826, a division of five thousand men was sent under the
command of Lieutenant-General Sir William Clinton to garrison the chief
towns. The accession of Pedro IV. to the throne was hailed with joy in
Portugal, though looked on with suspicion in Brazil. He justified his
reputation by drawing up a charter, containing the bases for a moderate
parliamentary government of the English type, which he sent over to
Portugal, by the English diplomatist, Lord Stuart de Rothesay. Then to
please his Brazilian subjects, he abdicated the throne of Portugal in
favour of his daughter, Donna Maria da Gloria, a child of seven years
old, on condition that on attaining a suitable age she should marry her
uncle, Dom Miguel, who was to swear to observe the new constitution. The
Charter of 1826 was thankfully received by the moderate parliamentary
party; Clinton’s division was withdrawn; Palmella remained prime
minister; and in the following year, 1827, Dom Pedro destroyed the
effect of his wise measures by appointing Dom Miguel to be regent of
Portugal in the name of the little queen.
Dom Miguel was an ambitious prince, who believed that he ought to be
king of Portugal; he was extremely popular with the old nobility, the
clergy, and the army, with all who disliked liberal ideas, and with the
beggars and the poor who were under the influence of the mendicant
orders. He was declared Regent in July, 1827, and in May, 1828, he
summoned a Cortes of the ancient type, such as had not met since 1697,
which under the presidency of the Bishop of Viseu offered him the throne
of Portugal. He{418} accepted, and immediately exiled all the leaders of the
parliamentary, or, as it is usually called, the Chartist, party, headed
by Palmella, Saldanha, Villa Flor, and Sampaio. They naturally fled to
England, where the young queen was stopping on her way to be educated at
the court of Vienna, and found popular opinion strongly in their favour.
But the Duke of Wellington and his Tory Cabinet refused to countenance
or assist them. The duke urged on the marriage of the queen with her
uncle, and persisted in confusing the moderate and the radical parties,
and in believing that Palmella was a democrat. The little queen was
herself kindly received by George IV., but the behaviour of the Duke of
Wellington was so obnoxious to her guardians, Amelia of Bavaria, Empress
of Brazil and second wife of Dom Pedro, and Felisberto Caldeira Brant
Pontes, Marquis of Barbacena, that they took her to France in 1829. She
was there granted the Château of Meudon for a residence, and was
educated by her stepmother, and two accomplished ladies, Eugenia Telles
da Gama, Countess of Palmella, and Leonor da Camara, Marchioness of
Ponte Delgada, while civil war was raging in Portugal in her name.
Meanwhile the reign of Dom Miguel had become a Reign of Terror; arrests
and executions were frequent; thousands were deported to Africa, and in
1830 it was estimated that forty thousand persons were in prison for
political offences. He ruled in absolute contempt of all law, and at
different times English, French, and American fleets entered the Tagus
to demand reparation for damage done to{419} commerce, or for the illegal
arrest of foreigners. The result of this conduct was that the country
was hopelessly ruined, and the chartist and radical parties, who
respectively advocated the Charter of 1826 and the Constitution of 1822,
agreed to sink their differences, and to oppose the bigoted tyrant. The
island of Terceira in the Azores had never recognized Dom Miguel, and it
was there in 1829 that Palmella, Villa Flor, José Antonio Guerreiro and
Quevedo Pizarro declared themselves a council of regency for Queen Maria
da Gloria. On the 11th of August, 1830, they defeated a fleet sent
against them by Dom Miguel in Praia Bay, and at this news all the
chartists who could escape from Portugal, and the numerous Portuguese
exiles in England and France, hastened to the Azores. Dom Pedro, who had
devoted his life to the cause of parliamentary government, resigned his
crown in 1831 to his infant son, and left Brazil to head the movement
for his daughter’s cause. He first went to London, where he met with a
good reception from the Liberal Cabinet of Lord Grey, and he there
negotiated a large loan in his daughter’s name. He then hastened to the
Azores with as many men as he could raise, most of whom were English
soldiers, tired of peace, or adventurers of other nations, and on his
arrival he appointed the Count of Villa Flor, commander-in-chief of the
army, and Captain Sartorius, of the English navy, admiral of the fleet,
of Queen Maria da Gloria.
In July, 1832, the ex-emperor with an army of 7,500 men arrived at
Oporto, where he was enthusiastically welcomed, and Dom Miguel then
laid{420} siege to the city. European opinion was divided between the two
parties; partisans of freedom and of constitutional government called
the Miguelites “slaves of a tyrant,” while lovers of absolutism,
alluding to the loans raised by the ex-emperor, used to speak of the
“stock-jobbing Pedroites.” The siege was long and protracted; Dom Miguel
finding himself invariably repulsed in his assaults, turned it into a
blockade, and want within the walls and cholera among the besiegers
decimated the armies. On both sides the commanders quarrelled among
themselves, and the only event worthy of mention is the defeat of the
Miguelite fleet by Sartorius on the 11th of October, 1832. In 1833 more
vigorous action marked the career of the Pedroites. Major-General João
Carlos Saldanha de Oliveira e Daun, an old officer of Beresford, and a
friend and former colleague of Palmella, took the command of the army in
Oporto, and defeated the Miguelites under the Count of San Lourenço, on
the 4th of March, and under General das Antas, on the 24th of March,
1833. Captain Charles Napier, of the English navy, succeeded Sartorius
as admiral of the Pedroite fleet, and conveyed a force of one thousand
five hundred men from Oporto to the Algarves, under the Count of Villa
Flor, now created Duke of Terceira, and then practically destroyed the
Miguelite fleet off Cape Saint Vincent on the 5th of July, 1833. The
Duke of Terceira was equally successful on land; he was warmly welcomed
by the people of the Algarves and the Alemtejo; his army was increased
by volunteers as he advanced; he utterly defeated the Miguelites under
General Telles{421} Jordão at Covada Piedade, and triumphantly entered
Lisbon on the 24th of July. Dom Pedro immediately sailed round to the
capital, and summoned his daughter from France, and on her arrival he
again proclaimed the Charter of 1826. The Miguelites, under the French
Marshal, Bourmont, then attacked Lisbon, but were easily beaten off. The
year 1834 was one of unbroken success for the Chartists. England and
France recognized Maria da Gloria as Queen of Portugal, and the ministry
of Queen Isabella of Spain, knowing Dom Miguel to be a Carlist, sent two
Spanish armies under Generals Rodil and Serrano to the help of Dom
Pedro. Saldanha took Leiria and defeated the disheartened Miguelites at
Torres Novas and Almoster; Captain Napier having destroyed the usurper’s
fleet, took to the land, and reduced the Beira, capturing Caminha,
Vianna, Ponte de Lima and Valença; General Sá de Bandeira conquered the
Alemtejo; and the Duke of Terceira overran the Tras-os-Montes, and won a
victory at Asseiceira. Finally the combined Spanish and Portuguese
armies surrounded the remnant of the Miguelites at Evora Monte, and on
the 26th of May, 1834, Dom Miguel surrendered. By the Convention of
Evora Monte, Dom Miguel abandoned his claim to the throne of Portugal,
and in consideration of a pension of £15,000 a year promised never again
to set foot in the kingdom.
Dom Pedro declared the young queen of age, and summoned a full Cortes to
meet at Lisbon. He appointed a strong ministry with the Duke of Palmella
as president, and the Duke of Terceira at{422} the War Office, and an
attempt was made to rearrange the finances and settle the kingdom. The
Cortes declared Dom Miguel and his heirs for ever ineligible to succeed
to the throne and forbade them to return to Portugal under pain of
death, and struck a fatal blow at the influence of the Miguelites by
abolishing all the orders of the friars, who had hitherto kept alive his
party in the provinces. Dom Pedro, who had throughout the struggle been
the heart and soul of his daughter’s party, had thus the pleasure of
seeing the country at peace, and a regular parliamentary system in
operation, but he did not long survive, for on the 24th of September,
1834, he died at Queluz near Lisbon, of an illness brought on by his
great labours and fatigues, leaving a name, which deserves all honour
from Portuguese and Brazilians alike.
Queen Maria da Gloria was only fifteen, when she thus lost the advantage
of her father’s wise counsel and steady help, yet it might have been
expected that her reign would be calm and prosperous. But neither the
queen, the nobility, nor the people, understood the principles of
parliamentary government, and the army, accustomed to fight and unable
to do anything else, was a constant source of danger. Members of
different parties could not or would not believe that all true
Portuguese alike loved Portugal; the party in power proscribed and
exiled its opponents, while the party in opposition invariably appealed
to arms, instead of seeking to enforce its opinions by legitimate
parliamentary means. In addition, the unfortunate country was ravaged by
numerous brigands, generally disbanded soldiers, who called themselves{423}
Miguelites, and who invariably escaped into Spain, when attacked in
force. Each successive government refused to recognize or to pay
interest upon the loans raised by its predecessor, and the financial
credit of Portugal soon fell to a very low ebb in the money markets of
Europe. It is unprofitable and almost impossible to examine here the
tendencies of the chief statesmen of the time, for new governments
quickly succeeded each other, and it will be sufficient to notice only
the most important “pronunciamentos” and appeals to arms. The whole
reign was one of violent party struggles, for they hardly deserve to be
called civil wars, so little did they involve, which present a striking
contrast to the peaceable constitutional government that at present
prevails.
In her earlier years, Queen Maria da Gloria was chiefly under the
influence of her stepmother, Amelia of Bavaria, and in January, 1835,
she married the Queen Dowager’s brother, Augustus Charles Eugène
Napoleon, Duke of Leuchtenberg, second son of Eugène de Beauharnais by
Princess Augusta of Bavaria, to the great chagrin of Louis Philippe of
France, who had proposed his son, the Duke of Nemours. This prince died
after two months’ residence in Portugal, but it was so necessary to have
an heir to the throne, that the queen was pressed to marry again at
once. She complied, and in January, 1836, she married Prince Ferdinand
of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, nephew of Leopold, King of the Belgians, and it
was his nomination to the high office of commander-in-chief, which
brought about the first appeal to arms. In September, 1836, Fernando
Soares da Caldeira{424} headed a “pronunciamento” in Lisbon for the
re-establishment of the Constitution of 1822, which was entirely
successful, and resulted in the drawing up of a new constitution. This
“pronunciamento” was followed by various other “pronunciamentos” and
good deal of fighting, but eventually the new Constitution of 1838,
which was really that of 1822 slightly modified, was generally adopted.
It worked until 1842, when one of the radical ministers, Antonio Bermudo
da Costa Cabral, suddenly declared for the Charter of 1826 at Oporto.
The Duke of Terceira at once headed a “pronunciamento” in Lisbon in
favour of the Charter, and came into office with Costa Cabral as home
secretary, and virtual prime minister. Costa Cabral, who was in 1845
created Count of Thomar, made himself very acceptable to the queen, and
by interpreting the Charter in the most royalist sense, even attempted
to check the liberty of the press. It was now the turn of the
Septembrists to have recourse to arms, and after an attempt to place
Saldanha in office, the opposition broke out into open insurrection
under the Viscount Sá de Bandeira, the Count of Bomfim and the Count das
Antas. This new insurrection was followed by what is known as the war of
Maria da Fonte or “Patuleia,” which is even more pitiable than its
predecessors. Foreign powers eventually intervened, and on the 29th of
June, 1847, the Convention of Granada was signed, by which a general
amnesty was declared, and Saldanha was maintained in power. In 1849 the
Count of Thomar once more came into office, and in 1851 he was again
expelled by Saldanha at the head of his troops. This was the last
“pronunciamento{425}” worthy of notice; in 1852 the Charter was revised to
suit all parties; direct voting, one of the chief claims of the
radicals, was allowed, and the era of civil war came to an end. Maria da
Gloria did not long survive this peaceful settlement, for she died on
the 15th of November, 1853, and her husband the King-Consort, Ferdinand
II., assumed the regency until his eldest son Pedro V. should come of
age.
The era of peaceful parliamentary government, which succeeded the stormy
reign of Maria II., has been one of material prosperity for Portugal;
agriculture and commerce revived, and a great literary and historical
revival took place, marked by the names of João Baptista de
Almeida-Garrett, Antonio Feliciano de Castilho, and José da Silva Mendes
Leal, the poets, and of Alexandra Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, the
Viscount de Santarem, and Luis Augusto Rebello da Silva, the historians.
Men were not wanting in the first half of the nineteenth century to
advocate the formation of an Iberian republic or kingdom, comprising the
whole of the peninsula, but the revival of national pride in recalling
the glorious past of Portuguese history, which has been the work of
these great poets and historians, has breathed afresh the spirit of
patriotism into a people which had been wearied out by perpetual
“pronunciamentos” and absurd civil wars.
The only political event of any importance during the reign of Pedro V.,
who came of age and assumed the government in 1855, and who in 1857
married the Princess Stephanie of Hohenzollern, was the affair of the
Charles et Georges. This French ship was engaged{426} in what was
undoubtedly the slave trade, though slightly disguised, off the coast of
Africa in 1858, when it was seized by the Portuguese authorities of
Mozambique, and, in accordance with the laws and treaties against the
slave trade, the captain, Roussel, was condemned to two years’
imprisonment. The Emperor Napoleon III., glad to have a chance of posing
before the French people, and counting on his close alliance with
England to prevent the intervention of the ancient ally of Portugal,
instantly sent a large fleet to the Tagus under Admiral Lavaud, and
demanded compensation, which, as England gave no hint of assistance,
Portugal was obliged to pay. The whole country, and especially the city
of Lisbon, was during this reign, on account of the neglect of all
sanitary precautions, ravaged by cholera and yellow fever, and it was in
the midst of one of these outbreaks, on the 11th of November, 1861, that
Pedro V., who had refused to leave his pestilence-stricken capital, died
of cholera, and was followed to the grave by two of his younger
brothers, Dom Ferdinand and Dom John.
At the time of Pedro’s death, his next brother and heir, Dom Luis, was
travelling on the continent, and his father, Ferdinand II., who long
survived Queen Maria da Gloria, and morganatically married Elise
Hensler, a dancer, assumed the regency until his return, soon after
which King Luis married Maria Pia, younger daughter of Victor Emmanuel,
king of Italy. The new monarch followed his brother’s policy, and
allowed his ministers to fight out their battles in the chambers without
any interference from himself.{427} During his reign, the old combatants of
the stormy reign of Maria da Gloria, Palmella, Terceira, Sá de Bandeira,
Thomar, and Saldanha, all died off, and with them their peculiar method
of enforcing their political views. Their successors in the leadership
of political parties, the Duke of Loulé and the Marquis of Avila,
Antonio Manoel Fontes Pereira de Mello and Antonio José Braamcamp, were
men of greater administrative ability, who did not go to war when they
were defeated in Parliament, and they therefore do not contribute any
striking pages to the national history, though they have done much for
the prosperity of the country. The last “pronunciamento,” or rather
attempt at a “pronunciamento,” of the last survivor of Maria da Gloria’s
turbulent statesmen, the Duke of Saldanha, in 1870, only proved how
entirely the time for such movements had passed away. He conceived the
idea that the Duke of Loulé was too great a favourite at court, and so
he one day came to the palace and after recalling to the king’s mind a
few historical examples, such as the fatal intimacy of Charles X. of
France with the Due de Polignac, he threatened an appeal to arms unless
the Duke of Loulé was at once dismissed. King Luis, perceiving that the
old man was in earnest and not wishing to have the peace of the country
disturbed, humoured his fancy, and after keeping Saldanha himself in
office for four months, despatched him as ambassador to London, where
the old warrior died in 1876. With this trifling exception, the reign of
King Luis was prosperous and peaceful, and the news of his death on
October 9, 1889, was received with general regret.{428}
Luis I. was succeeded on the throne by his elder son, Dom Carlos, or
Charles I., a young man of twenty-six, who married in 1886, the Princess
Marie Amélie de Bourbon, the eldest daughter of the Comte de Paris. His
accession was immediately followed by the revolution of the 15th of
November, 1889, in Brazil, by which his great uncle, Pedro II., Emperor
of Brazil, was dethroned and a republican government established in that
country. This news created a profound impression in Portugal; the
republican party, which has for some years been growing in strength in
the cities of Lisbon and Oporto hailed it with delight, and the
democratic journals urged that the example of Brazil should be followed.
The young king’s difficulties have been further increased by the
disputes which have arisen with regard to Africa, and there is no
concealing the fact that Charles I. will have to show the greatest
political wisdom, if he is to weather the storms now besetting the
position of Portugal, and to save the Portuguese monarchy.
Many allusions have been made to the possessions of Portugal in Africa.
It has been seen that certain places both on the east and west coasts of
Africa, such as Angola and Mozambique, were originally occupied and
fortified as resting-places for the Portuguese fleets on the way to and
from India, and that when they were re-taken after the Revolution of
1640, they were occupied only because they had formerly belonged to
Portugal and not because of their intrinsic value. Of recent years,
however, the value of these settlements has increased owing to the
opening up of Africa to commerce. This is thoroughly{429} understood by the
more intelligent of modern Portuguese statesmen, and courageous
Portuguese travellers, such as Serpa Pinto, Roberto Ivens, and Brito
Capello, have taken their part in obtaining a more correct knowledge of
the geography of Africa. But the opening up of Africa has attracted
settlers and explorers of other nations to the “Dark Continent,” who, if
they have not denied the rights of Portugal, have certainly infringed
them. The original Portuguese settlements were merely ports at which
ships might rest and refit; and the points at issue now concern the
amount of the territory adjoining those settlements or of the
“hinterland” behind them towards the interior, which rightly belongs to
Portugal. This question of boundaries is in the nature of things a
difficult one to settle, and it is much to be regretted that the
disputes which have arisen have chiefly been with England, the ancient
ally of Portugal. The high spirit of the Portuguese people has been
wounded by the tone of part of the English press, and their knowledge of
their own present weakness and of their past greatness has made them the
more sensitive. Some of their agents in Africa have possibly acted in an
arbitrary and high-handed manner, and Englishmen have not been slow to
resent such treatment. Yet it is to be sincerely hoped that these
differences between the two ancient allies may be peacefully settled,
and it may be that some knowledge of how close the friendship of the two
nations was for many centuries may make the English people feel more
tolerantly inclined towards the claims of the Portuguese to
consideration and respect.{430}
Within recent years the internal prosperity of Portugal has increased;
railways and telegraphs have been constructed; sanitary improvements
have been introduced; and a good system of national primary and
secondary education has been established, owing mainly to the efforts of
the poet, Antonio Feliciano de Castilho. Its financial condition,
however, may well give rise to the deepest apprehension; the amount of
its national debt is nearly as heavy in proportion to its population as
that of England, and the repudiation of loans during the reign of Maria
II. has made it difficult to raise money in the more wealthy countries
of Europe. Even more serious danger to the prosperity of Portugal is
threatened by the continued emigration to Brazil, to which country a
large number of the sturdy peasants flock every year, chiefly from the
northern provinces of the Tras-os-Montes and the Entre-Minho-e-Douro.
This continuous stream of emigration, though prejudicial to Portugal,
has been of the greatest service to Brazil, and Greater Portugal, as the
mother country and her colony in South America may be termed, though
politically divided, is more prosperous than ever.
Even more striking than the advance of material prosperity has been the
great literary revival, which has marked the era of peaceful
parliamentary government. King Luis was an enlightened patron of
letters, and translated some of the plays of Shakespeare into Portuguese
in a manner which showed him to be well versed in the capabilities of
his own language. In the country of Camoens there has been no lack of
poets, though none of the modern writers{431} would dare to class themselves
with him. Foremost among these poets are Almeida-Garrett and Castilho,
who alike sang the ancient glories of Portugal, but among their
followers are many whose inspiration is hardly inferior to their own.
Such men as José da Silva Mendes Leal, Luis Augusto Palmeirim, and João
Soares de Passos, have written poems worthy to rank with the classics of
Portuguese literature, and their muse has generally been fostered by a
knowledge of ancient writers and of old national lyrical forms. Even
more important than the poets are the historians of modern Portugal, for
they are the men who have made the Portuguese so proud of their
nationality that they still cling closely to their independence and
oppose the advocates of “Iberianism.” The founder of the new school of
scientific historians was Alexandra Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, who,
after imitating Sir Walter Scott in his historical novels, showed that
he had been influenced by Niebuhr and Ranke in his famous history of
Portugal, of which the first volume was published in 1848. He it was who
first grasped the fact that history can only be rightly studied and
correctly written after a careful and critical investigation of
documents, and he manifested both energy and discernment in clearing
away the cobweb of legend which had been spun about the early days of
the nation. Herculano inspired his spirit into the new generation, and
he has had many painstaking and able followers, among whom the ablest
are Luis Augusto Rebello da Silva, Simião José da Luz Soriano, and José
Maria Latino Coelho. In general literature, the modern Portuguese are
equally{432} distinguished, though their greatest strength lies in poetry
and history, and it is worthy of notice, that literary fame is a sure
passport to rapid advancement in political life. The high opinion held
of literary endeavour is an evidence of the persistency of the national
spirit, and as such may be welcomed as the brightest augury for the
future development of the Portuguese nation.
Few countries of Europe will repay attentive study better than Portugal;
no nation, except Spain, passed through such a trial as the reign of
Maria da Gloria, and in no country have the advantages of representative
institutions been better realized; socialism possesses there a
reforming, not a revolutionary, force; knowledge of the history of their
nation, inspired by great writers, has made the modern Portuguese
ambitious to revive the glories of the past, and has united men of all
shades of opinion in a common patriotism. The Camoens celebration of
1880 showed that the Brazilians are still proud of their mother country,
and that the Portuguese race on both sides of the Atlantic was ready to
develop new energy and perseverance, and to prove its descent from the
men who under Affonso Henriques conquered the Moors; who under John I.
and John IV. rejected the rule of the Spaniards; who under Affonso de
Alboquerque and João de Castro made their names famous from Arabia to
Japan; and who, by the labours of Prince Henry “the Navigator” and the
voyage of Vasco da Gama, initiated a new era in the history of the
world.{433}
A,
B,
C,
D,
E,
F,
G,
H,
I,
J,
K,
L,
M,
N,
O,
P,
Q,
R,
S,
T,
U,
V,
W,
Y,
Z
A
Abd-el-Melik, 248, 250, 253, 254
Abrantes, 57, 104, 392
Abrantes, Marquis of, 393
Abu Abdallah, Governor of Alcacer do Sal, 72, 73
Abu-l-Hasan, defeated at the Salado, 1340, 92
Abyssinia, visits of Portuguese travellers to, 167
“Academia Real das Sciencias,” 372, 396
Academy of History, 353
A’Court, Sir William; see Heytesbury, Lord
Aden, 200, 214
Affonso Henriques, 24, 31, 34, 35, 37-58, 98
Affonso II., 70-74, 98
Affonso III., 79, 80-83, 89, 98
Affonso IV., 86, 91-99
Affonso V., 130-35, 138, 159, 160
Affonso VI., 324, 326-34
Affonso, son of Affonso III., 85, 86
Affonso, only son of John II., 163, 170
Affonso, João, bastard son of Diniz, 91
Affonso, Pedro, bastard son of Count Henry, 31
Affonso, Pedro, bastard son of Diniz, Count of Barcellos, 91
Africa, 144-56, 195, 213, 247, 343, 346, 428, 429
Agriculture, 87, 181, 368
Ahmed, Maulā, 248, 249, 253-55
Alans, the, conquer Lusitania, 10
Alarcos, battle of, 63
Albergaria, Diogo Soares de, 169
Albergaria, Francisco Soares de, 309
Albergaria, Lopo Soares de, 203
Albert, Cardinal, 286, 290
Alboquerque, Affonso de, 169, 185, 193, 197-201
Alboquerque, Francisco de, 193
Alboquerque, João de, 209
Alboquerque, Mathias de, 291
Alboquerque, Mathias de, 317
Alboquerque, Pedro de, 169
Alboquerque, Sancho, Count of, 101
Alcacer do Sal, 54, 62, 66, 72
Alcacer-Quibir, battle of (1578), 254
Alcanede granted to Knights of Calatrava, 66
Alcantara, battle of (1580), 283
Alçobaça, monastery of, 54, 69, 98, 99, 397
Alçobaça, Cortes of, 164, 165
Alemquer, 53, 104
Alemtejo, the, 55, 57, 66, 87, 181, 421
Alexander III., Pope, 57
Alexander VI., Pope, 163, 191
Alfarrobeira, battle of (1449), 133
Alfonso VI., 17, 18, 23
Alfonso VII., 30, 35, 37-39, 54
Alfonso VIII., 63, 71
Alfonso IX., 63, 64, 71
Alfonso X., 81
Alfonso XI., 92
Algarves, the, 43, 62, 76, 78, 80, 81, 181, 182
Alho, Affonso Martins, 94
Ali, Almoravide Caliph, 28
Ali Adil Shah, King of Bijápur, 247
Aljubarrota, battle of, 111, 113
Aljustrel, taken by Knights of Santiago, 76
Almada, 53, 62, 66, 104, 312
Almada, Alvaro Vaz de, see Arronches, Count of
Almada, Antonio de, 308, 311
Almanza, battle of (1707), 351
Almeida taken by the Spaniards (1760), 363
Almeida, Francisco de, 195-97, 214
Almeida, Lourenço de, 175, 196
Almeida, Miguel de, 308, 309, 311
Almeida-Garrett, João Baptista, 425, 431
Almohades, the, 44, 55, 57, 62;
see Ya’kūb, Yūsuf
Almoravides, the, 17, 41
Almoster, battle of (1834), 421
Alorna, João de Almeida Portugal, Marquis of, 371, 374
Alorna, Pedro, Marquis of, 395
Alva, Duke of, 249, 281, 283
Alvares, Manoel, 276
Alvares, Mattheus, 287
Alvitiz, Pedro, 72
“Amadis of Gaul” romance, 126
Amarante, Francisco da Silveira, Count of, 415
Ameixial, battle of (1663), 331
Amelia of Bavaria, 418, 423
Anadia, Viscount of, 391
Andeiro, João Fernandes, see Ourem, Count of
Andrade, Gomes Freire de, 395, 413
Andrade, Jacinto Freire de, 325
Andrew of London, 52
Andrew of Oxford, 93
Angeja, Marquis of, 372
Angola, 324, 346
Anne of Austria, 314, 315
Annes, Affonso, 109
Annes, Estevão, 80
Annes, Gonçalo, 167
Annes, Martim, 75
Annes, Pedro, 73, 75
Annunciacão, Miguel de, 371
Antas, General das, 420, 424
Antonio, Prior of Crato, 281, 283-86
Aranjuez, Treaty of (1793), 386
Arcadia de Lisboa, 369, 372
Arguin, fort at, 154, 295
Armamar, Count of, 316
Arnold of Aerschot, 52
Arnold, Edmund, 118
Arrayolos, Count of, 130
Arronches, battle of (1801), 389
Arronches, Antonio Vaz de Almada, Count of, 132, 133
Arundel, Richard, Earl of, 93
Arundel, Thomas, Earl of, 118
Arzila, 133, 179, 249, 253, 285
Ashworth, Sir C., 405
Asseiceira, battle of (1834), 421
Asturians, the, 5
Ataulphus, Visigothic king, 11
Athaide, Catherina de, 270
Athaide, Luis de, Viceroy of India, 246-48, 257
Atoleiros, battle of (1384), 110
Augustus, Duke of Leuchtenberg, 423
Ayamonte, 78, 80
Ayamonte, Marquis of, 316, 317
Aymeric of Cahors, 89
Azambuja, Diogo de, 169
Azambuja, Jeronymo de, 276
Azamor in Morocco, 179
Azevedo, Antonio de Araujo de, 387, 388, 391, 396
Azores, the, 147, 285, 295, 419
Azurara, chronicler, 135, 379
B
Badajoz, 56, 326, 375, 389
Bahādar Shah, King of Gujarāt, 204, 205
Bainetti, Marquis de, 305
Baldaya, Affonso Gonçalves, 147
Ballerais, Count of, 316
Bank of Portugal, 368
Bar, Count of, 62
Barbacena, Felisberto Caldeira Brant Pontes, Marquis of, 405, 418
Barbosa du Bocage, Manoel Maria, 379, 385
Barbosa Machado, Diogo, see Machado
Barcellos, João Affonso Telles de Menezes, Count of, 104
Barcellos, Duke of, 255
Bardez, Marāthas defeated at, 374
Barreto, Antonio Moniz, 320
Barreto, Antonio Moniz, 247, 248
Barreto, Francisco, 246, 247, 271
Barros, João de, 185, 226, 274-76
Batalha, Convent, 113, 119
Batavia, 294, 342
Beatrice de Gusman, 81
Beatrice of Castile, 86, 98
Beatrice, daughter of Pedro I., 101
Beatrice, daughter of Ferdinand and Leonor, 106, 107
Beatrice, daughter of the “Holy Constable,” 125
Beatrice, daughter of Emmanuel, 178, 264
Beauvais, Bishop of, 62
Belatha, Emirate of, 43
Belem, palace at, 176;
Convent at, 184, 204;
Sebastian buried at, 256
Bellesta, Spanish general, 397
Benedict XIV., Pope, 360
Bengal, trade with, 205, 296, 343
Beresford, William Carr, Viscount, 400, 402, 405-7, 412, 413
Bermudo II., King of Gallicia, 13
Berwick, James, Duke of, 351
Bishoprics and bishops, 10, 26, 30, 67, 75, 79, 183
Black Death, the, 95
Blake, Admiral Robert, 323, 324
Bojador, Cape, 146, 147
Bombay ceded to England, 330, 346
Bomfim, Count of, 424
Bonaparte, Joseph, 401
Bonaparte, Lucien, 389
Braamcamp, Antonio José, 427
Bradford, Sir Edward, 405, 406
Braga, Archbishopric of, 26
Braga Cathedral, 32, 98
Braganza, the Dukes of, 303
Braganza, Affonso, Duke of, 125, 126, 131-33
Braganza, Alvaro de, 161
Braganza, Catherine, Duchess of, 278
Braganza, Constantino de, 212, 213, 246, 270
Braganza, Ferdinand, Duke of, 161, 162
Braganza, Jaymé de, 255
Braganza, João, Duke of, 280, 284
Braganza, Theodosio, Duke of, 304
Brandão, Antonio, 301
Brazil, 175, 221-35, 243, 296-98, 318-20, 336, 337, 346-48, 369, 375-77, 392, 414, 419, 428, 430
Breyner, Pedro de Mello, 393, 396
Brézé, Chevalier de, 315
Brito, Bernardo de, 7, 301
Brotero, Felix de Avellar, 380, 385
Bugio, castle of, 312
Burton, Sir Richard F., quoted, 90, 130, 242, 257
Busaco, battle of (1810), 402
C
Cabo Branco, 148
Cabral, Gonçalo Velho, 147
Cabral, Pedro Alvares, 175, 192, 193, 221, 222
Cacello taken, 78, 80
Caceres taken by Affonso Henriques, 55, 56
Cadamosto, Luigi, 151, 152
Cadaval, Duke of, 336, 351
Cafim, abandoned by John III., 179
Calatrava, Order of, 66
Caldeira, Francisco Soares da, 423, 424
Calicut, 189, 193, 198
Calpurnius, C., 6
Cam, or Cão, Diogo, 156
Camara, Luis Gonçalves da, Jesuit, 241, 242
Camara, Martim da, 241
Caminha, Andrade, 267
Caminha, Duke of, 315-17
Camoens, Luis de, his life, 268-71;
his “Lusiads,” 271-74, 379
Camoens, “Lusiads” of, 7, 45, 90, 97, 130, 189, 214
Camoens Celebration, 274, 432
Campbell, Sir Archibald, 405, 407
Campo, Don Luiz de, 311
Cannanore, 193, 196
Cannon, 111, 113, 169
Cantabrians, the, 5
Cantanhede, Antonio Luis de Menezes, Count of, 327
Canton, Andrade at, 175, 215, 342
Cape Matapan, 352
Cape of Good Hope, 156, 343
Cape Saint Vincent, 420
Cape Verde, 150
Cape Verde Islands, 153, 346
Caraffa, Spanish general, 392
Cardenas, Don Didace de, 305
Carlotta Joaquina, 373, 404, 411, 414
Carneiro, Pedro de Alçaçova, 241, 245, 249
Carracena, Marquis of, 331
Carthaginians, the, 5, 6
Carvalho, Antonio Coelho de, 314
Carvalho, Lourenço Peres de, 316
Carvalho e Mello, Sebastião José de, see Pombal, Marquis of
Castanheda, Fernão Lopes de, 185
Castel Melhor, Luis de Sousa e Vasconcellos, Count of, 331-33
Castilho, Antonio Feliciano de, 425, 430, 431
Castlereagh, Lord, 407, 408
Castro Alvaro Peres de, 95
Castro, Antonio José de, 397
Castro, Fernando de, 305, 306
Castro, Ines de, 95-98
Castro, João de, 206, 210-12
Castro, Joaquim Machado de, 368, 380
Castro, Pedro Fernandes de, 93, 95
Catherine, daughter of King Edward, 134, 164
Catherine of Austria, 178, 240
Catherine of Braganza, 323, 329, 330, 336, 340
Catherine de’ Medici, 278, 285
Cave-dwellers in Portugal, 4, 5
Cavida, Antonio de, 334
Celestine III., Pope, 63, 64
Celorico, built by Sancho I., 69
Cerneja, battle of (1137), 38
Ceuta, 123, 333
Ceylon, 184, 203, 292, 342
Cezimbra, palace at, 119
Chancellors of Portugal, 88
Charles I., King of Portugal, 428
Charles I., of England, 314
Charles II., of England, 329, 330
Charles V., Emperor, 178, 179
Charles, Archduke, 338, 340, 351
Charles VIII., of France, 165
Charles III., Duke of Savoy, 178
“Charles-et-Georges,” the, 425, 426
Charlot, General, 397
Charter of 1826, 417, 421, 424, 425
Chastenau, Comte de, 337
Chaul, battle of (1508), 196
Chimnaji Apā takes Bassein, 373
China, 175, 215, 216, 342
Chin Chee, factory at, 215
Christ, Order of, 86, 124, 183
Christianity introduced, 10, 12
Chronica do Conquista do Algarves, 127
Chroniclers, the early, 126, 127, 379
Cintra, 53, 104, 119, 334, 400
Ciudad Rodrigo, 56, 331, 341
Clement XIV., Pope, 364
Cleynaerts, quoted, 236
Clinton, Col. Henry, 390
Cochin, 193, 195, 196, 198, 204, 294, 342
Cochin China, 175, 214
Coelho, Duarte, 175, 214
Coelho da Silva, Francisco, 385
Coelho, José Maria Latino, 431
Coimbra, 15, 18, 24, 28, 58, 74, 83, 87, 97, 105, 111, 119, 406
Coimbra, bishops of, see Annunciacão, Aymeric, Tiburcio
Coimbra, University of, see University
Coligny, Admiral, 234
Colombo, factory, 203
Columbus, Christopher, 169
Commerce, Treaties of, 86, 94, 165, 337-40, 372
Congo, the, 151
Congreve, William, quoted, 216
Constance, daughter of Diniz, 86
Constance, wife of Pedro, 92, 95
Constituent Assembly of 1820, 413, 414
Constitution of 1822, 414, 424
Conti, valet of Affonso VI., 330, 331
Conventions, 400, 421, 424
Correa, Antonio, 309, 316
Correa da Silva, Antonio, 380
Correa da Serra, José, 379, 385
Correia, Paio Peres, 76
Corte-Real, Diogo de Mendonça, Count of, 352
Corte-Real, Gaspar, 175
Corte-Real, Jeronymo, 267, 301
Cortes, 45, 71, 81, 83, 106, 111, 128, 130, 160, 164, 165, 257, 280, 283, 312, 417
Costa Cabral, Antonio Bermudo da, see Thomar, Count of
Costa, Duarte da, 233
Costa, João da, 262
Courts of Love, 89, 91
Coutinho, Francisco, see Redondo, Count of
Coutinho, Gaston, 308, 311
Coutinho, Luis Pinto de Sousa, 386
Coutinho, Manoel de Sousa, 291
Coutinho, Ruy Pereira, 175
Couto, Diogo do, 185, 301
Covada Piedade, battle of, 421
Covilham, João Peres de, 167
Cromwell, Oliver, 323
Crusaders, 48, 52, 60, 62, 72
Crusadoes, struck by Affonso V., 133
Cruz e Silva, Antonio Diniz da, 378
Cueva, Fernando de la, 313
Cunha, Ayres da, 226
Cunha, Cardinal da, 354
Cunha, Estevão da, 308, 309
Cunha e Menezes, Francisco da, 393
Cunha, João Lourenço da, 101, 104
Cunha, Luis da, 308
Cunha, Luis da, 359
Cunha, Nuno da, 204, 205
Cunha, Rodrigo da, 308, 311
Cunha, Tristão da, 175, 196, 197
D
Da Cunha, Da Silva, &c., see Cunha, Silva, &c.
Dábhol, sacked by Almeida, 197
Daman, taken by Constantino de Braganza, 213, 270
Das Antas, Das Regras, &c., see Antas, Regras, &c.
De Castro, De Noronha, &c., see Castro, Noronha, &c.
Denifle, H., “Universitäten des Mittelalters,” 260
Diamonds discovered in Brazil, 377
Diamper (Udayampura), Synod of, 292
Dias, Bartholomeu, 156
Dickson, Sir Alexander, 405
Diniz, King of Portugal, 81, 83, 85-91, 98, 260
Diniz, son of Pedro I. and Ines de Castro, 103, 114, 118
Diogo, Duke of Viseu, 162
Diu, Island of, 197, 204, 205, 211, 212, 334
Domingues, Rodrigo, 93
Domingues, Vasco, 104
Drake, Sir Francis, 285, 290
Dulce of Aragon, queen of Sancho I., 57, 98
Duperron de Castera, 379
D’Urban, Sir Benjamin, 402
Dutch, the, 290, 291, 294-98, 314, 315, 318, 320, 341-43, 346
E
Eannes, Gil, doubles Cape Bojador, 147
Earthquake of Lisbon, 357, 358
Eben, Baron, 401
Education, National system of, 430
Edward, King of Portugal, 122, 124, 126-29
Edward I., of England, 86
Edward II., of England, 86
Edward III., of England, 93, 94, 104
Edward IV., of England, 134, 164
Edward, the Black Prince, 94
Edward, Duke of Guimaraens, 178, 278
Egas, João, Archbishop of Braga, 79
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 285, 295
Elmina, fort built at, 156
Elvas, 75, 312, 327, 360, 389
Emeralds found in Brazil, 377
Emmanuel, King of Portugal, 170-78, 188, 191, 215
England, 52, 62, 72, 86, 93-95, 106, 111, 113, 116-18, 164, 165, 290, 295, 296, 329, 330, 336, 337-40, 343, 352, 363, 380, 381, 387, 388, 399-405, 414, 417, 421, 429
Epic, first Portuguese, 93
Equator, the, crossed, 154
Era, changed from Augustan to Christian, 121
Espinosa, Gabriel, 288
Euric, Visigothic king, 11
Evora, Pedro de, 167
Evora, 10, 55, 57, 66, 128, 135, 160, 302, 331
Evora Monte, surrender of, 421
F
Faria e Sousa, Manoel, 185, 301
Farinha, Affonso Peres, 76
Faro, Affonso, Count of, 161
Ferdinand, King of Portugal, 99-107
Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 423, 425, 426
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, 134, 135, 163, 171
Ferdinand VI., of Spain, 352
Ferdinand I., of Leon, 14, 15
Ferdinand II., of Leon, 54-56
Ferdinand IV., of Castile, 86
Ferdinand, son of Sancho I., 70, 74
Ferdinand, son of Affonso II., 76, 78, 79
Ferdinand, son of John I., the “Constant Prince,” 122, 125, 129, 130
Ferdinand, son of Edward, 153, 161
Ferdinand, son of Emmanuel, Duke of Guarda, 178
Ferdinand, son of Maria II., 426
Fernandes, João, 151
Fernandes, Martim, 73
Ferrario, Francisco, 276
Ferreira, Antonio, 266, 267
Feudalism in Portugal, 87, 88, 120, 121, 160, 413
“Fidelissimus,” title conferred on kings of Portugal, 353
Fielding, Henry, 381
“Filintists,” the, 379
Flor da Rosa, battle of (1801), 389
Fonseca, Agostino Luis da, 405, 407
Fontaine, Pierre Louis, 385
Fontainebleau, Treaty of (1807), 392
Forbes-Skelater, João, 386
Francis Xavier, St., 209, 212, 295
Frederick III., Emperor, 134
Freemasons, 385, 393
Freire, Antonio de Andrade, 371
French, the, in Brazil, 233-35
French Revolution, 382, 383, 385, 414
Friars, Orders of, 74, 208, 417, 422
Funchal, in Madeira, 144
G
Galle in Ceylon, 330
Gallicia, 15, 25, 37-39, 56
Gallicians, mentioned by Strabo, 5
Garveras, Count das, 340
Galway, Henri de Ruvigny, Lord, 340, 341, 351
Gama, Antonio de Saldanha da, see Porto Santo, Count of
Gama, Estevão da, 205, 206
Gama, Vasco da, 175, 188, 189, 191-93, 203, 204
Gaunt, John of, see Lancaster, Duke of
Gazeta de Lisboa, 325
Gelmires, Diogo, 28-30
George IV. of England receives Maria II., 418
Goa, 183, 198, 201, 203, 208, 209, 246, 247, 292, 294, 317, 342, 343, 374, 375, 390
Godoy, Prince of the Peace, 386, 387, 392
Goes, Damião de, 274
Gold, discovery of, in Brazil, 336, 337, 347, 348, 376
Gomes, Diogo, 153
Gomes, Fernan, 154
Gomes, Sueiro, 72, 74, 78
Gomes, Violante, 281
Gonçalves, Alvaro, 97, 98
Gonçalves, Antonio, 148, 151
Gonçalves, Lopo, 154
Gonzales, Sebastião, 218
Gonzales, Sebastião, 286, 287
Goths, the, 10, 11
Govea, Andrea, 261, 262
Govea, Antonio, 261
Govea, Martial, 261
Graa, Ruy de, 169
Granada, Convention of, 424
Greek colonies in Portugal, 5
Gregory IX., Pope, 76
Gregory XI., Pope, 101
Gregory XIII., Pope, 249, 278
Guimaraens, 5, 24, 31, 133, 304
Guinea, discovered by Diniz Dias, 150
Gusmão, Bartholomeu de, 379, 380
Guy of Boulogne, Cardinal, 103
Guy of Vico, Cardinal, 39
Gylfels, Dutch Admiral, 315
H
Hamilton, Captain, quoted, 374
Hamilton, Sir John, 407
Haro, Don Luiz de, 327
Hawker, Sir Richard, 405
Henry of Burgundy, 18, 20, 21, 20-24, 98
Henry, Cardinal, King of Portugal, 183, 240, 241, 257
Henry IV., of England, 118
Henry V., of England, 118
Henry VII., of England, 165
Henry I., of Castile, 70
Henry II., of Castile, 101, 103, 106
Henry III., of Castile, 113
Henry IV., of Castile, 134
Henry, Prince, “the Navigator,” 122, 124, 125, 131, 132, 140-53
Hensler, Elise, 426
Hentzel, squire of John of Gaunt, 111
Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, Alexandre, 102, 425, 431
Herman, M., 396
Heytesbury, W. A’Court, Lord, 415
Historians of Portugal, 126, 127, 274, 275, 301, 369, 372, 379, 425, 431, 432
Holland, Earl of, 72
Honorius III., Pope, 73, 75
Hoseyn, Emir, 197
Hospital, Knights of St. John, of the, 32, 66, 76, 80
Houtman, Cornelius, 291
Hugh of Cluny, 23, 28
Hunter, Sir W. W., quoted, 190, 201, 291, 294
I
Iberianism, 2, 415, 421
Ilheos in Brazil, 229
India, 143, 167, 175, 189, 190, 192-213, 245-48, 291-96, 342, 343, 373-75
Innocent II., Pope, 39, 40
Innocent III., Pope, 67, 69, 71
Innocent IV., Pope, 79
Inquiracãoes-geraes, 73, 160
Inquisition, 183, 231, 246, 291, 294, 343, 354, 367, 413
Interdicts, 69, 73, 78, 81
Isabel, St., 86, 91, 92
Isabel, daughter of John I., 125, 134
Isabel, queen of Affonso V., 132, 134
Isabel, daughter of Emmanuel, 178
Isabel Maria, daughter of John VI., 416
Isabella, Queen of Castile, see Ferdinand and Isabella
Isabella, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, 163, 171, 174
J
Jaffnapatam, taken by Dutch, 342
Jant, Chevalier de, 323, 329
Jaymé, son of Duke of Coimbra, 133
Jesuits, 183, 209, 230, 231, 343, 347, 359-61, 364
Jews, Portuguese, 171, 172, 173
Joanna, Lady of Flanders, 70
Joanna, daughter of King Edward, 135
Joanna, queen of Affonso V., 134
Joanna, daughter of Affonso V., 165
Joanna, daughter of Charles V., 179, 240
John I., King of Portugal, 97, 103, 105-7, 109-11, 113-27, 133, 261
John II., King of Portugal, 156, 158-70
John III., King of Portugal, 174-84, 261, 263
John IV., King of Portugal, 304-6, 312-17, 321, 323, 324
John V., King of Portugal, 350-54
John VI., King of Portugal, 373-89, 392, 393, 408, 410, 411, 414-16
John XXI., Pope, 83
John XXII., Pope, 86
John I., of Castile, 106, 107, 110, 111, 113
John, son of Pedro I., 103-5
John, Duke of Beja, 122, 125
John, son of John III., 179, 184
John, son of Maria II., 426
John of Abbeville, Cardinal, 75, 76
Joseph, King of Portugal, 354-70
Joseph, bastard son of John V., 371
Joseph, son of Maria I. and Pedro III., 373
Julião, Chancellor, 67, 71
Junot, General, 391, 392, 393, 395-97, 400
Juromenha, 66, 389
Justice, administration of, 88, 121, 160, 367
K
Kandy, conquest of king of, 292
Kersaint, French deputy, 385
Knights, military religious Orders of, 32, 48, 66, 76
L
Labrador discovered, 175
La Clue, French admiral, 358
Lafões, João de Braganza, Duke of, 371, 372, 385
Laharpe translates “Camoens,” 379
Lamego, 8, 15, 45
Lançarote, his slaving voyages, 149
Lancaster, Henry, Earl of, 93
Lancaster, John of Gaunt, Duke of, 103, 113
Lane-Poole, S., quoted, 11, 172
Language, the Portuguese, 2, 8, 89, 121, 265
Law, Portuguese, 10, 88, 121, 124
Leça granted to Knights of Hospital, 32
Le Cor, Carlos Frederico, 392, 405, 407, 411
Leiria, 10, 43, 46, 81, 87, 106, 183, 368, 421
Lemos, Damião Antonio de, 369
Leonor Telles de Menezes, Queen, 101, 103-5, 107, 110
Leonor, daughter of Affonso IV., 94
Leonor, daughter of Edward, 134
Leonora of Aragon, 124, 130, 131
Leonora of Castile, 101, 102
Lhuillier, member of Regency, 396
Lima, Luis de, 255
Limia, taken by Affonso Henriques, 37, 56
Linhares, built by Sancho I., 69
Lippe-Buckeburg, Count of, 363, 364, 367
Lisbon, 5, 8, 12, 17, 18, 51, 52, 64, 87, 95, 102, 103, 109, 110, 119, 120, 182, 236, 237, 257, 260, 261, 286, 290, 302, 308-12, 333, 338, 353, 355, 357, 358, 368, 372, 380, 381, 393, 413, 421, 426, 427
Literature, 89, 90, 126, 127, 135, 137, 169, 259-77, 301, 325, 369, 377-79, 425, 430-32
Lobeira, Vasco de, 126
Lodeiro, granted to Knights of Sepulchre, 32
Loison, General, 397
London, crusaders from, 62, 94
Lopes, Fernan, chronicler, 127, 379
Lopes, Martim, 167
Louis XI., of France, 135, 159
Louis XIV., of France, 329, 332
Loulé, Marquis of, 415
Lourenço, Archbishop of Braga, 110, 121
Lourenço, Theresa, 97
Luis I., King of Portugal, 426, 427, 430
Luis, son of Emmanuel, Duke of Beja, 178, 179, 211, 281
Luisa de Guzman, Queen of John IV., 304, 305, 326-31
Lusitania, not Portugal, 6-8
Lusitanians, 5-7
Luz Soriano, Simião José da, historian, 431
M
Macao, 215, 270, 317, 342, 369, 375
Macassar, 343
Machado, Diogo Barbosa, 369
Machado de Castro, Joaquim, see Castro
Machico, Province of Madeira, 144
Machin, Robert, 144-46
Madden, Sir Samuel, 405
Madeira, 144-46, 390, 399
Madrid, 341;
treaty of, 351, 352
Mafra, 53, 353, 397
Magalhães, Fernão de, 175, 180, 199, 214
Magalhães, Pedro Jacques de, 331
Magellan, see Magalhães
Magro, Gonçalo Peres, 80
Major, R. H., quoted, 141, 149
Malacca, 175, 199, 214, 247, 248, 294, 317, 342
Malagrida, Gabriel, 361, 364
Maldive Islands, 175, 196
Mangalore, 246
Manique, Diogo Ignacio de Pina, 172, 382, 385, 390
Manufactures, Pembal and, 368
Marāthas, the, 343, 373, 374
Margaret of France, 244
Margaret of Savoy, 305, 306, 309
Maria I., Queen of Portugal, 370-73, 393, 408
Maria II., Queen of Portugal, 417, 418, 421-25
Maria, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, 174
Maria, daughter of Affonso IV., 92
Maria, daughter of John III., 179
Maria Amelia, queen of Carlos I., 428
Maria Barbara, daughter of John V., 352
Maria Benedicta, 373
Maria Francisca, marries Affonso VI., 332;
and Pedro II., 333, 334
Maria Josepha, marries Pedro IV., 412
Maria Pia, queen of Luis I., 426
Maria Sophia, queen of Pedro II., 336
Marialva, Marquis of, 331
Marialva, Marquis of, 412
Marianna, queen of John V., 351
Marianna Vittoria, queen of Joseph, 352, 370
Martinho, commander of Palmella, 72
Martinho, Archbishop of Lisbon, 109
Martins, Lourenço, 109
Mascarenhas, Francisco de, 291
Mascarenhas, João de, 211
Mascarenhas, João de, see Cadaval, Duke of
Mascarenhas, Martinho de, 371
Mascarenhas, Pedro de, 175
Mascarenhas, Pedro de, 212
Mascarenhas, Pedro de, 308
Masséna, Marshal, 404-6
Matapan, Cape, battle off, 352
Matilda of Savoy, 41
Matilda, daughter of Affonso Henriques, 54
Matilda, daughter of Sancho I., 70
Maurice of Nassau, 298, 318, 319
Maurice, Bishop of Coimbra, 21, 28
Mauritius, 175, 346
Mayne, Colonel, 399
Mazagon, 240
Mazarin, Cardinal, 321, 323, 329
Medina Sidonia, Duke of, 304
Melinda, 189, 213
Mello, Affonso de, 312
Mello de Menezes, Antonio, 308, 309
Mello e Castro, Diniz de, 340
Mello, Francisco de, 314, 329
Mello, Jorge de, 308, 309, 312
Mello, e Castro, Martinho, 367, 368, 372, 388
Mello, Vasco Martins de, 105
Mencia, queen of Sancho II., 78, 80
Mendes, Antonio, 262
Mendes, Gonçalo, 73, 74
Mendes, Nuno, 15
Mendes, Paio, 30, 31
Mendes, Sueiro, 17, 30, 31
Mendes Leal, José da Silva, 425, 431
Mendonça, Antonio Lopes de, 180
Mendonça, Diogo de, 297
Mendonça, Diogo de, see Corte Real, Count of
Mendonça, João de, 246
Mendonça, Lopo Furtado de, see Rio Grande, Count of
Mendonça Furtado, Pedro de, 308, 311
Mendonça, Pedro Francisco de, 334
Menezes, Alexis de, 242, 245
Menezes, Alexis de, 292
Menezes, Diogo de, 248
Menezes, Duarte de, 203, 209
Menezes, Duarte de, 255
Menezes, Duarte de, 291
Menezes, Emmanuel de, 297
Menezes, Fernando de, 270
Menezes, Garcia de, 6
Menezes, Henrique de, 204
Menezes, João de, 169
Mertola, taken (1239), 78
Methuen, Right Hon. John, 337
Methuen Treaty, 337-40, 368
Metternich, Prince, 412
Meudon, Château of, 418
Mickle, William James, 379
Miguel, King of Portugal, 411, 412, 414-21
Miguel, son of Emmanuel, 174
Miller, Colonel John, 405
Minas, Marquis das, 340, 341
Miranda, bishopric of, 183
Missionaries, their work in India, 208, 209, 292, 343
Mohammed III. of Gujarāt, 205, 211, 212
Mohammed En-Nasir, 71
Mohammedans, 11-13, 40-58, 60-63, 78, 80
Molingen, Baron of, 317
Moluccas, the, 175, 214, 294
Mombassa, 189, 195, 213
Moniz, Egas, tutor of Affonso
Henriques, 31, 35, 36
Moniz, Emigio, 31
Montaigne, Michel de, quoted, 261
Monte Mor, João de Braganza, Marquis of, 161
Monte Video taken (1817), 411
Montes Claros, battle of (1665), 331
Montijo, battle of (1642), 317
Moplas, the, 190, 193
Moradias, 180
Morales, Juan, 146
Morocco, 122, 123, 129, 133, 179, 211, 248, 252-55, 346
Mortmain, laws of, 71, 73, 88
Moura, 76
Moura, Christovão de, 280
Mousinho, Manoel de Brito, 402
Mowbray, Thomas, 111
Mozambique, 189, 213, 247, 337, 343, 428
Munden, Captain Anthony, 346
Municipal Institutions, 10, 12, 22, 65, 87, 120
Muscat taken (1554), 270
N
Nanfran, Richard, 165
Napier, Sir Charles, 420, 421
Napoleon I., 388-92
Napoleon III., 426
Nascimento, Francisco Manoel de, 379, 385
Navas de Tolosa, battle of, 71
Navy, the Portuguese, 88, 121, 290, 353, 354, 367
Neiva, Gonçalo Telles, Count of, 104
Nestorian Christians in India, 209, 292, 294
Neutim, 374
Nicholas IV., Pope, 87
Niza, Marquis of, 386
Noel, Pierre, 385
Noronha, Affonso de, 212, 214
Noronha, Antonio de, 246, 247
Noronha, Carlos de, 308, 309
Noronha, Diogo de, 386, 387
Noronha, Francisco Xavier de, 393
Noronha, Garcia de, 205
Noronha, Pedro de, 169
Noronha Sebastião de Mattos de, 306, 309, 311, 315-17
Noronha, Theresa de, 355
Norris, Sir John, 285
Northberry, John, 111
Nova Castella, João de, 175
Nova Zembla discovered, 167
“Novaes Christiãos,” 173, 182, 228, 316, 365
Nunes, Gomes, 38
Nunes do Prado, João, 91
Nunes, Pedro, 262, 277
Nunes, Sancho, 31
O
Obidos, 104
Odivelas, Convent of, 98
Oeyras, Count of, see Pombal, Marquis of
Olhão, Marquis of, 393
Olivares, Count-Duke of, 298, 299, 307, 313, 316
Olivença, 389, 408
Omar, Emir, 44-46
Opera-house at Lisbon, 370
Oporto, 8, 12, 13, 64, 113, 133, 338, 397, 401, 413, 419, 420
Oporto, bishops of, see Castro, Hugh, Rodrigues, Salvadores
Oporto Wine Company, 368
Orense, 28, 30
Oriolla, Jeronymo Lobo da Silveira, Count of, 408
Ormuz, 197, 214, 296
Osorio, Jeronymo, Bishop of Silves, 262
Ossuna, Duke of, 331
Ourem, João Fernando Andeiro, Count of, 104-6, 109
Ourique, battle of, 44-46
Oxenstiern, Chancellor of Sweden, 314
P
Pacheco, Diogo Lopes de, 97, 98
Pacheco, Duarte, 195
Pack, Sir Denis, 405, 406
Paços de Penalva, granted to knights of Sepulchre, 32
Paes, Gualdim, 62
Palmeirim, General, 405
Palmeirim, Luis Augusto, 431
Palmella, 53, 62
Palmella, Pedro de Sousa Holstein, Duke of, 404, 408, 415, 417-19, 421
Panjim, 198, 374, 375
Paraguay, 175
Paraiba, Captainship of, 298
Passos, João Soares de, 431
Patuleia, war of, 424
Paulist Republic, the, 376
Paullus, L. Æmilius, 6
Payva, Affonso de, 167
Pedro I., 92, 95, 98, 99
Pedro II., 332-41
Pedro III., 370-73
Pedro IV., 411, 414, 416, 417, 419-22
Pedro V., 425, 426
Pedro II., Emperor of Brazil, 419, 428
Pedro IV., King of Aragon, 94
Pedro, son of Sancho I., 70, 76, 78, 80
Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, 122, 124, 126, 130-33
Pedro Hispano elected Pope, 83
Pekin, Andrade at, 175, 215
Penafiel, Count of, 413
Peninsular War, the, 399-407
Pennamacor, Count of, 165
Pepper trade, 193, 342
Pereira de Mello, Antonio Manoel Fontes, 427
Pereira, Christovão de Brito, 331, 332
Pereira, Nuno Alvares, “the Holy Constable,” 107, 109, 110, 111, 125, 126
Peres, Abril, 75
Peres, David, 370, 380
Peres, Rodrigo, 38
Peres de Trava, see Trava
Perestrello, Bartholomeu, 144, 147
Perignon, Marshal, 387
Pernambuco, in Brazil, 229, 295, 298, 320
Persian trade, 214, 296
Pessanha, Lançarote, 109
Pessanha, Manoel, 88, 93, 145
Philip II., of Spain, 179, 248, 280, 283, 290, 298
Philip III., of Spain, 299
Philip IV., of Spain, 304, 313
Philip V., of Spain, 337, 340
Philip “the Good,” 125
Philip of Flanders, 58
Philippa daughter of John of Gaunt, queen of John I., 113-15, 123
Pieterzoon, L. S., 379
Pina, Ruy de, 169, 379
Pina Manique, Diogo Ignacio de, see Manique
Pinheiro, Antonio de, 280
Pinhel, 104
Pinto, Fernão Mendes, 216, 217
Pinto, Serpa, 429
Pires, Ines, 118, 125
Pisano, Matthew de, 6, 7, 127
Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 362
Pizarro, Quevedo, 419
Placencia, 341
Plate, River, 175
Po, Fernando, 154
Poetry and poets, 89, 90, 126, 263, 264-74, 301, 378, 379, 430, 431
Pombal, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, Marquis of, 355, 357, 358, 360-71
Ponáni, 196
Ponte de Lima, 421
Ponte de Lima, Thomas Xavier de Lima Brito, Marquis of, 372
Ponte Delgada, Leonor da Camara, Marchioness of, 418
Porches, 80
Porto, see Oporto
Porto Alegre, bishopric of, 183
Porto Carrero, Cardinal, 337
Porto de Moz, 53
Porto Santo, island of, 144
Porto Santo, Antonio de Saldanha da Gama, Count of, 408
Porto Seguro, 222, 229
Portuguese Legion, the, 395
Povoa, General da, 405
Praia Bay, battle of (1830), 419
Prehistoric monuments, 4, 5
Prose, its commencement, 126, 127
Puebla, Marquis de la, 305, 311
Q
Quebedo, Vasco Mousinho de, 301
Quesnel, French general, 397
Quiloa, South-east Africa, 195
Quilon, India, 196
R
Ramires, Mem, 49
Rarim, 374
Ratton, Jacome, 385
Raymond of Toulouse, 18, 21, 23
Raymond Berenger of Aragon, 54
Rebello da Silva, Luis Augusto, 425, 431
Recife, island of, 298, 320
Red Sea, the, 200, 204, 205, 270
Redondo, Francisco Coutinho, Count of, 184, 246, 270
Regency of 1807, the, 393, 400, 401, 404, 407, 412, 413
Regency of 1808, 396
Regras, João das, 109, 111, 121
Republican party, 428
Resende, Andrea de, 7, 262, 277
Resende, Count of, 413
Resende, Sebastião de, 256
Réunion, island of, 175
Ribeiro, Bernardim, 263, 264, 276
Ribeiro, João Pinto, 305, 306, 308, 309, 325
Ribeiros, Bernardim, 405
Richard II., of England, 106, 113, 118
Richard III., of England, 165
Richard of Saham, 93, 94
Richelieu, Cardinal, 302, 314, 315
Rio de Janeiro, 351
Rio d’Ouro, 147
Rio Grande, 298
Rio Grande, Count of, 352
Rodil, General, 421
Rodrigues, Martinho, 69, 76
Roliça, battle of (1808), 399
Romans, the, 6-8, 10
Romances, 126
Rooke, Admiral Sir George, 337, 340
Rosslyn, General Earl of, 391
Roussel, Captain, 426
Rubies in Brazil, 377
Rupert, Prince, 323
S
Sá e Mello, Ayres de, 372
Sá, Emmanuel de, 234
Sá, Emmanuel de, 308
Sá de Menezes, Francisco de, 301, 325
Sá de Miranda, Francisco de, 264-66
Sá, Garcia de, 212
Sá, Pantaleone de, 323
Sá, Rodrigo de, 308, 309, 323
Sá e Benevides, Salvador Correa de, 324, 343, 346
Sá de Bandeira, Viscount, 421, 424
Saccavem, 104
Sadashivgarh, 374
Sagre, Prince Henry at, 125, 140, 141
St. Antonio, Castle of, 312
St. Benedict of Aviz, Order of, 66, 80, 103, 125, 170, 183
St. Caetano, Ignacio de, 372
St. George, Citadel of, 311, 395
St. Helena, 175, 346
St. Ildefonso, Treaty of (1796), 387
St. Julian, Castle of, 313
St. Lourenço, João Amberto de Noronha, Count of, 371
St. Lourenço, Count of, 420
St. Mamede, battle of, 31
St. Michael in the Azores, 147
St. Paio de Gouvea, 32
St. Paul in Brazil, 376
St. Pé, Chevalier de, 302
St. Salvador, 230, 297, 298
St. Thomé, 343
St. Vincent, Cape, battle off, 420
St. Vincent, Earl of, 391
Salado, The, battle of, 93
Saldanha, Antonio de, 193
Saldanha, Antonio de, 308, 311
Saldanha, Cardinal de, 60
Saldanha, João Carlos de Saldanha de Oliveira e Daun, Duke of, 418, 420, 421, 424, 427
Salic law, the, rejected, 106
Salvaterra, 87, 107
Sampaio, Lopo Vaz de, Governor-General of India, 204
Sampaio, Count of, 396, 413, 418
San Caetano, San Lourenço, &c., see St. Caetano, &c.
Sancha, daughter of Sancho I., 74
Sanches, Affonso, 91, 92
Sancho I., 56-58, 60-70
Sancho II., 74-80
Sandwich, Earl of, 330, 333
Santarem, 17, 18, 49, 57, 58, 60, 62, 87, 393
Santarem, João de, 154
Santarem, Viscount of, 215, 425
Santiago, Knights of, 76, 87, 125, 170, 183
Sarria, Marquis of, 363
Sartorius, Admiral Sir George Robert, 419, 420
Savage, Thomas, 165
Scabra, José de, 396
Schomberg, Frederick, Count, 327, 331
Sebastian, King, 184, 238, 240-45, 249, 251-56
Sebastianistas, the, 256, 257
Sebastians, the false, 286-90
Seia, Castle of, 37
Senegal, River, 150
Sepulchre, Knights of the, 32, 66
Sequeira, Diogo Lopes de, 175, 199, 203
Sequeira, Domingos Antonio de, 380
Sequeira, Luis de, 292
Serpa, 76, 299
Serra, José Correa da, 379, 385
Serrão, Francisco, 175, 199, 214
Serrano, General, 421
Sesnando, Count of Coimbra, 15, 17
Seyr, 18, 24
Shah Jehān, takes Hūglī, 296
Ship-building, 143, 144, 169
Siam, 175, 214
Sieges, 24, 28, 29, 37, 49, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 72, 75, 103, 110, 123, 129, 205, 211, 247, 320, 326, 373, 374, 419, 420, 421
Silkworms, 368
Silva, Antonio Correa da, 380
Silva, Antonio Telles da, 319, 320
Silva, Diogo da, 183
Silva, Estevão Soares da, 73, 75
Silva, Francisco Coelho da, 385
Silva, Luca de Scabra da, 391
Silva, Luis Augusto Rebello da, 425, 431
Silveira, Antonio de, 205
Silveira, Antonio de, 401, 405, 413
Silveira, Francisco de, see Amarante, Count of
Silveira, Jeronymo Lobo de, see Oriolla, Count of
Silves, 62
Simcoe, Gen. J. G., 391
Simon of Dover, 52
Skelater, Gen. João Forbes, 386
Slavery, 182, 243, 365
Slave-trade, the African, 148-50, 228, 347, 375
Smith, Sir Sidney, 392
Soares, Garcia, 31
Sodre, Vicente, 193
Solano, Spanish general, 392
Soriano, Simião José da Luz, 431
Soult, Marshal, 401
Soure, 32, 351
Sousa, Diogo de, 252, 257
Sousa Coutinho, Domingos Antonio de, 400
Sousa Holstein, Frederico de, 371
Sousa, Gonçalo de, 311
Sousa Coutinho, Luis Pinto de, 386
Sousa, Manoel de, 214
Sousa, Martim Affonso de, 205, 206, 209
Sousa Holstein, Pedro de, see Palmella, Duke of
Sousa Coutinho, Rodrigo de, 388
Sousa, Thomas de, 229-33
Sousa, Vasco Martins de, 99
Southwell, Sir Richard, 333
Spanish Succession, war of the 340, 341, 351
Spencer, Gen. Sir Brent, 399
Spice Islands, 199, 294, 295
Spice trade, 214, 294, 295, 342
Stephanie of Hohenzollern, 425
Stephens, Thomas, 294
Strabo, 5
Stratton, Robert, 94
Strozzi, Philip, 285
Stuart, Major-General Hon. Sir Charles, 387, 388
Stuart de Rothesay, Lord, 404, 407, 412, 417
Stukeley, Sir Thomas, 252, 255
Suez, Estevão da Gama at, 206
Sugar, cultivation of, 145, 228, 318, 347, 375
Sumatra, 175, 199, 294
Surat, 295
Synod of Diamper, 292
T
Talavera, battle of (1809), 401
Talikot, battle of (1565), 246
Tamaraca in Brazil, 229, 298
Tangier, 129, 133, 245, 253, 330
Taranco, Spanish general, 392
Tavira, 76, 80
Tavora, Christovão de, 256
Tavora, Marquis of, 361, 362, 374
Taxation, right of, 83
Telles de Menezes, Gonçalo, 104
Telles de Menezes, João Affonso, 104
Telles de Menezes, Leonor, see Leonor
Telles de Menezes, Maria, 104, 105
Tello, Sebastião de, 316
Templars, Knights, 32, 43, 57, 62, 66, 72, 86
Terceira, battle of (1582), 285
Terceira, Count of Villa Flor, Duke of, 418-22, 424
Teshfīn, last Almoravide Caliph, 44
Texeira, Miguel de, 297
Theodosio, son of John IV., 312, 324
Theotonio, St., 49, 58
Theresa, daughter of Alfonso VI., Countess of Portugal, 18, 22-32, 98
Theresa, daughter of Affonso Henriques, 58
Theresa, daughter of Sancho I., 63, 64
Thierry of Alsace, 54
Thomar, 43, 44, 62, 184, 283
Thomar, Antonio Bermudo da Costa Cabral, Count of, 424
Thomas, St., bones of, 208, 209
Thomières, General, 397
Tieve, Diogo de, 262, 266
Tobacco in Brazil, 347, 375
Topazes in Brazil, 377
Tordesillas, Treaty of (1494), 163
Toro, battle of (1476), 135
Torre del Tombo, 135, 186
Torres Novas, 53, 130, 421
Torres Vedras, 104, 405
Tower and Sword, Order of, 135, 137
Trancoso, battle of (1385), 111
Trant, Colonel Sir Nicholas, 405, 406
Trava, Bermudo Peres de, 29, 37
Trava, Fernando Peres de, 28, 29, 31, 37, 38
Travot, General, 397
Treaties, 29, 39, 40, 55, 107, 113, 163, 333, 337-40, 351, 352, 386, 387, 389, 392
Treaties of Commerce, 86, 94, 165
Tristão, Nuno, reached Cabo Branco, 148;
killed, 150
Troubadours, influence of the, on Portuguese poetry, 89, 91
Truxillo, taken by Affonso Henriques, 55
Tullio, Marco, 288-90
Tunis, expedition to, 179, 211
Tuy, 28-30, 38, 56
Tyrawley, Lord, 257, 352
U
Udayampura (Diamper), 292
University at Lisbon, 89;
at Coimbra, 260-62, 268, 278, 355, 367, 376
Urban IV., Pope, 81
Urraca, daughter of Alfonso VI., 18, 23, 29, 30
Urraca, daughter of Affonso Henriques, 54
Urraca, queen of Affonso II., 70, 74
Uruguay, Republic of, 411
V
Valdevez, tourney and truce of, 39
Valença, 421
Valencia de Alcantara, battle of (1762), 363
Valignano, Alexandre de, 292
Valverde, battle of (1385), 113
Vasconcellos de Brito, Miguel, 306, 309
Vasconcellos, Rodrigues de, 111
Vasconians, the, 5
Vasques, Fernan, 102
Vaublanc, Viennot de, 396
Vaz, Tristão, 144
Vela, Rodrigo, 38
Vertot, Abbé, 45, 308
Vespucci, Amerigo, 175, 222
Vianna, 368, 421
Vicente, Dean of Lisbon, 74-76
Vicente, Gil, 262, 263
Victor, Marshal, 401
Vidigueira, Count of, see Gama, Vasco da
Vieira, Antonio, 325
Vieira, João Fernandes, 320
Vienna, Congress of, 407, 408
Villa Flor, Count of, 331
Villa Flor, Count of, see Terceira, Duke of
Villa Real, Marquis of, 315-17
Villa Velha, battle of (1762), 363
Villa Verde, Count of, 391
Villa Viçosa, 104, 305, 306, 312, 332
Villegagnon, Nicolas Durant, Sieur de, 234
Villiers, Right Hon. J. C, 400
Vimeiro, battle of (1808), 400
Vinetus, Elias, 262
Viniculture, 87, 145, 368
Viriathus, Lusitanian hero, 6
Viseu, 8, 15
Visigothic rule, 10, 11
W
Waldeck, Prince of, 387, 388
Waldemar, King of Denmark, 70
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 399-402, 405-407, 418
Willikens, Dutch admiral, 297
Wilson, Colonel John, 405
Wilson, Colonel Sir Robert T., 399, 401
Windsor, Treaty of (1386), 113, 118, 128, 131, 164
Witchcraft, 69
Y
Ya’kūb, Almohade Caliph, 60, 62, 63
Yokohama, factory at, 217
York, Edmund, Duke of, 106
York, Edward, Duke of, 106, 107
Yusūf, Almohade Caliph, 57, 58
Yusūf Adil Shah, King of Bijápur, 198
Yusūf Ibn Teshfīn, 17
Z
Zalaca, battle of (1086), 17
Zamora, Affonso Henriques, 35, 39, 40
Zamorin of Calicut, the, 190, 195, 196
Zarco, João Gonçalves, 144
The Story of the Nations.
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| Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: |
|---|
| and and Gallicia=> and Gallicia {pg 25} |
| the the chief=> the chief {pg 189} |
| in both direction=> in both directions {pg 213} |
| when he succeeded to his county=> when he succeeded to his country {pg 238} |
| her to believed in him=> her to believe in him {pg 288} |
| Aorna, João Alorna, João {pg index} |
| Máráthás=> Marāthas {pg index} |
| Melllo, Jorge de=> Mello, Jorge de {pg index} |
| Novães => Novaes {pg index} |
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45581 ***
