Portuguese portraits

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

List of Illustrations

	FACING PAGE
[NUN’ ALVAREZ]	[Frontispiece]
From the earliest (1526) edition of the Cronica.
[PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR]	[49]
[VASCO DA GAMA]	[63]
[AFFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE]	[105]
From Gaspar Correa, Lendas da India, frontispiece to vol. ii. pt. 1.
[JOÃO DE CASTRO]	[129]

I
KING DINIS

(1261-1325)

Co’ este o reino prospero florece.
Camões, Os Lusiadas.

Um Dinis que ha de admirar o mundo.
Antonio de Sousa de Macedo, Ulyssippo.

When Henry of the French House of Burgundy became Count of Portugal in 1095 he merely held a province in fealty to the King of Leon, but by his son, the great Affonso I’s victories over the Moors it almost automatically became an independent kingdom. The second king, Sancho I, who has so many points of resemblance to King Dinis, further established the new realm, and he and his successors continued to wrest territory from the Moors. In the reign of the fifth king, Dinis’ father, Affonso III, the conquest of Algarve was completed, and the only remaining difficulty was the claim of the kings of Castille to this region.

Dinis, born on October 9, 1261, was but a few years old when he was sent to Seville to win the consent of his mother’s father, the celebrated Alfonso the Learned, to waive his right to the latest Portuguese conquest. As the shrewd Affonso III had foreseen, he proved a successful diplomatist. Alfonso X, enchanted with the grave, courtly bearing of his little grandson, knighted him and sent him home with all his requests granted.

Thus it came about that when Dinis, to whom his father had given a separate household but a few months before, ascended the throne at the age of seventeen, he was the first king to begin to reign over Portugal with its modern boundaries, from the River Minho to Faro. Two centuries of great deeds had achieved this result—two more were to pass before Spain was likewise entirely free of the Moorish invader—and Dinis now in a reign of half a century (1279-1325) saw to it that the heroism and sacrifices of his ancestors had not been in vain.

His tutor had been a Frenchman, Ébrard de Cahors, who now became Bishop of Coimbra, and the fame of his grandfather Alfonso X was spread through the whole Peninsula. But, young as he was, Dinis at once made it clear that he intended to rule as the national King of Portugal and had resolution enough to withstand the Castilian influence of his mother and Alfonso X. His first care was to acquaint himself thoroughly with his kingdom, and he spent the great part of the first year of his reign in visiting the country, paying especial attention to the still almost deserted region of Alentejo.

But the first years of his reign were not entirely peaceful, for his younger brother Affonso laid claim to the throne. Dinis was born before the Pope had legitimised Affonso III’s second marriage; Affonso, two years his junior, afterwards: hence the partisans of the latter affected to consider Dinis illegitimate. The dispute was scarcely settled when Dinis married Isabel, daughter of Pedro III of Aragon, who proved so efficacious a mediator in the even more serious troubles at the end of his reign, and, after sharing his throne for forty-three years, is still venerated as the Queen-Saint of Portugal.

In his differences with Castile, Dinis was successful, both in peace and war, and it was a tribute to his character and authority that he was chosen as arbitrator between the claims of the kings of Castille and Aragon. At home he was confronted by a powerful secular clergy, by the excessive and growing wealth of the religious orders, and by an overweening nobility, while his newly conquered kingdom urgently required hands to till it and walls and castles for its defence. Dinis dealt with all these problems in a spirit of equal wisdom and firmness, upholding the rights of the throne and the rights of the people till he had welded a scattered crowd of individuals into a nation.

His quarrel with the clergy, who protested that the King had infringed their rights, was referred to Rome, and in 1289 a formal but not a lasting agreement was reached.

Two years later the King checked the ever-growing possessions of the religious orders by a law limiting their right to gifts and legacies. Their wealth was the result of the great part they had played during the long conflict against the Moors, but it naturally began to prove inconvenient to King and people in time of peace. The nobles were in like case, and Dinis showed the same resolution towards them and abolished certain of their privileges.

He could protect as well as check. When the Knights Templar were abolished by the Pope, Dinis secured an exception for Portugal and reorganised them as the Order of Christ in 1319. Indeed he was essentially a builder, not a demolisher. In 1290 he founded the University of Coimbra; in 1308 he renewed and consolidated the treaty between Portugal and England; in 1317 he invited to Portugal a Genoese, Manuel Pezagno, to organise his fleet and command it as Admiral.

He encouraged agriculture, calling the peasants the “nerves of the republic” and passed many laws to ensure their security, so that in his reign men began to go in safety along the roads of Portugal, hitherto infested by brigands, and he divided grants of land among the poor of the towns. He planted near Leiria the pines which still form so delightful a feature of the country between that town and Alcobaça.

Some have called King Dinis a miser, others declare that in his reign there was a saying “liberal as King Dinis.” It is certain that he expended his money wisely, and, while no early king ever accomplished more for the land over which he ruled, he left a full treasury at his death. The charge of avarice perhaps arose from the charming legend which so well exemplifies the simplicity of those times.

The Queen was in the habit of distributing bread daily to a large number of poor, and Dinis, who perhaps would rather have seen them digging the soil, forbade the charity. Queen Isabel continued as before, and one morning the King met her as she went out with her apron full of bread.

“What have you there?” said King Dinis.

“Roses,” said the Queen.

“Let me see them,” said King Dinis.

And behold the Queen’s apron was filled with roses.

In the matter of buildings King Dinis not only fortified many towns with castles and walls, but founded numerous churches and convents. The traveller in Portugal even now can scarcely pass a day without coming upon something to remind him of the sixth King of Portugal. The convent of Odivellas, the cloisters of Alcobaça, the beautiful ruins of the castle above Leiria are but three of many instances which show how King Dinis’ work survives even in the twentieth century.

It was said of him that—

Whate’er he willed
Dinis fulfilled.

But he nearly always wrought even better than he knew. He realised no doubt that Portugal was an all-but-island, especially when the relations with Castille were unfriendly; but he could scarcely foresee that of his pinewoods would be built the “ships that went to the discovery of new worlds and seas”; that a future Master of his new Order of Christ would devote its vast revenues to the great work of exploring the West Coast of Africa, the work which bore so important a share in transforming Europe from all that we connect with mediævalism to all that is modern; that his embryo fleet would grow and prosper till Portugal became the foremost sea-power; or that the treaty with England would still be bearing fruit six centuries after his death.

The University, too, lasted and became one of the glories of Portugal, and a source of many of her greatest men in the sixteenth century. Since the sixteenth century, after being several times moved from Coimbra to Lisbon and from Lisbon to Coimbra, it has been fixed in the little town on the right bank of the Mondego and remains one of the most treasured possessions of modern Portugal. The quality that explains how so many of King Dinis’ institutions endured and prospered marvellously in succeeding centuries was thoroughness, the conviction that any work, however humble, if thoroughly done must bear excellent fruit, and a certain solidity which finds little satisfaction in feeding beggars precariously, but great satisfaction in setting them to work on the land.

Perhaps, then, it may come as a surprise that King Dinis was also a poet, one of the greatest of Portugal’s early poets. We have nearly one hundred and fifty poems under his name. He may not have written them all, some may have been composed by the palace jograes, but he showed his good taste and inclination for the national and popular elements in writing or collecting not only poems in the Provençal manner, then on the wane in Portugal, but that older, indigenous poetry which is the most charming feature of early Portuguese literature.

And King Dinis’ poems are among the most charming of all. Here is one of his quaint popular songs, the fascination of which is only faintly discernible in translation:

Friend and lover mine
—Be God our shield!—
See the flower o’ the pine
And fare afield.
Friend and lover, ah me!
—Be God our shield!—
See the flower on the tree
And fare afield.
See the flower o’ the pine
—Be God our shield!—
Saddle the colt so fine
And fare afield.
See the flower on the tree
—Be God our shield!—
The bay horse fair to see
And fare afield.
Saddle the little bay
—Be God our shield—
Hasten, my love, away,
And fare afield.
The horse so fair to see
—Be God our shield!—
My friend, come speedily
To fare afield.

It was King Dinis’ affection for his illegitimate son, Dom Affonso Sanchez, also a poet, that brought trouble on the latter years of his reign. His eldest son and the heir to the throne, Affonso, jealous of the regard, the lands, and privileges bestowed upon Dom Affonso Sanchez, afraid perhaps that the King might devise a way of leaving him the throne, rose in rebellion in 1320 and advanced through Minho to Leiria and Coimbra, ravaging the country as he came. The King, now nearly sixty years old, set out against him and several engagements were fought: it was not till 1322 that Queen Isabel succeeded after strenuous exertions in bringing about peace.

The reconciliation was but temporary. Dom Affonso Sanchez retired to Spain, but returned, and the Prince Affonso rose in arms again in 1323. Again Queen Isabel, going from one to the other, exerted herself to make peace. King Dinis, his anger now thoroughly roused, was not easily appeased. Finally he agreed to increase the Prince’s income, and, much against his will, to part once more from Dom Affonso Sanchez.

Not many months after this settlement King Dinis fell ill at Lisbon, where he had been born, and which he made the real centre of his kingdom (his instinct unfailing in this as in other matters concerning the future greatness of his country). Prince Affonso was summoned from Leiria, and a sincere reconciliation followed. The Queen watched day and night by her husband’s bedside, and to her his last words were spoken when on January 7, 1325, one of the greatest of Portugal’s kings died. He was buried according to his wish in the Convent of São Dinis de Odivellas, which he had founded near Lisbon.

Three hundred years after his death it was still the custom in Portuguese law-courts for a prayer to be said for his soul; and if we consider how far-reaching, how immense were the results of the measures taken by this strong-willed, wise, and energetic ruler, we may conclude that the custom might well be continued in the twentieth century. Humane and affable (conversavel, the quality of so many great men), he won the personal love of his people and gave them immediate prosperity, but he also, apparently, saw deep into the future.

II
NUN’ ALVAREZ

(1360-1431)

Mas quem podera dignamente contar os louvores deste virtuoso barom, cujas obras e discretos autos seemdo todos postos em escrito ocupariam gram parte deste livro?—Fernam Lopez, Cronica del Rei Dom Joam.

Fifty years after the death of King Dinis it seemed as if the kingdom that he had so carefully built up was to crumble away like dry sand. The disorders and extravagances of King Ferdinand’s reign had brought it to the verge of ruin, and the marriage of his only child Beatrice with the King of Castille in 1383 appeared to destroy the last hope of an independent Portugal.

It is ten years before that date that Nun’ Alvarez Pereira, to whom mainly Portugal was to owe her continued existence as a separate nation, first comes on the scene. His father was the powerful Prior of Crato, Dom Alvaro Gonçalvez Pereira, in high favour at Court, son of the Archbishop of Braga and descendant of a long line of nobles. His mother, Iria Gonçalvez, was lady-in-waiting to the Princess Beatrice.

In 1373 there was war between Portugal and Castile, and a rumour spread that the enemy was approaching Santarem. The Prior sent Nuno and one of his brothers with a few horsemen to reconnoitre. On their return they were received by the King and Queen. Queen Lianor, struck by the bearing of the shy, precocious boy of thirteen, took him for her squire, and the King knighted him, after a suit of armour of his size had at last been found, belonging to the king’s half-brother John, the Master of Avis, he who was king thereafter.

For three years in the palace the Queen’s squire gave his days to riding and the chase, and to the reading of books of chivalry, of Sir Galahad and the knights of the Round Table. Then his father arranged a marriage for him with the rich and noble Dona Lianor d’Alvim, a young widow of Minho.

Marriage was not in Nuno’s thoughts, but Dona Lianor had consented, the King approved, and reluctantly he yielded. His life on their estate was happy. Fifteen squires and thirty henchmen were in attendance in their house, and after hearing his daily mass Nun’ Alvarez would spend long days hunting the boar and the wolf in the wooded hills of Minho or exchanging visits with the Minhoto nobility.

Of their three children two sons died in infancy; the daughter, Beatriz, was married to the Count of Barcellos, son of King João I, and through her Nun’ Alvarez was the ancestor of that line of kings which was still reigning in 1910.

It was a life too quiet for the times, and a few years later Nuno was ordered to Portalegre to defend with his brothers the frontier against the Spanish. As they marched from Villa Viçosa to Elvas, Nuno, the wish father of the thought in his keenness to encounter the enemy, mistook the glint of the morning sun on the lances of their own footmen, who had been sent on ahead, for the enemy advancing and gave the alarm. To his vexation there was no fighting, and when he challenged the son of the Master of Santiago to combat, ten against ten, the king forbade the encounter, and the Earl of Cambridge, then at the Portuguese Court, to whom Nun’ Alvarez appealed, pleaded for him in vain.

In 1382 a powerful Spanish fleet besieged Lisbon. The defence of the city was entrusted to Nun’ Alvarez and his brothers. It was in late summer, quando l’uva imbruna, and parties from the fleet would land to gather grapes and other fruit. Nun’ Alvarez saw his opportunity and, leaving the city one night with some fifty horse and foot, lay in ambush in the vines by the bridge of Alcantara. The first boatload of twenty Spaniards to land was driven headlong into the sea, but a larger force came ashore and the Portuguese, seeing themselves outnumbered five to one, fled.

Nun’ Alvarez, left alone, spurred his horse to a gallop and dashed into the midst of the enemy. His excellent armour stood him in good stead, but his lance was shattered, his horse cut down, and one of his spurs caught in the saddle as he fell. Thus disabled he still fought on, and then for very shame his followers turned to assist him. The first to come up was a Lisbon priest, afterwards Canon of Lisbon Cathedral.

Nun’ Alvarez, hearing a few months later that the King was to engage the enemy between Elvas and Badajoz, proposed to his elder brother Pedr’ Alvarez, who had succeeded their father as Prior of Crato, that they should have a hand in the fighting. Pedro, who had orders to defend Lisbon and intended to obey them, refused, and, having previous acquaintance of Nuno’s methods, gave instructions that no armed persons should be allowed to leave the city. Nuno with a few attendants dashed past the guard at the gate and rode post-haste to Elvas. He was well received by the king, but again there was no fighting. Peace and the betrothal of Beatrice were celebrated in a banquet at Elvas. King Ferdinand was too ill to attend, but King Juan was present.

Nun’ Alvarez, in his bitterness at seeing Portugal given over to Castille, for once forgot his manners. He and his brother Fernão, going in more leisurely than the rest, found all the tables crowded, and, unable to obtain a place, he pushed away the support from one of the tables, which went crashing to the ground, and calmly went out. King Juan remarked that he who so acted had a heart for greater things, but, in the words of the old chronicle, had they been Castilians he might have spoken differently.

After King Ferdinand’s death Nun’ Alvarez, brooding over his country’s wrongs, keenly took the part of the young Master of Avis. He was not present at the murder of the Queen’s favourite, the Count Andeiro, but he approved the act, and when news of it reached him at Santarem he hastened to Lisbon to the Master of Avis.

It was at Santarem one evening as he sauntered along the banks of the Tagus after supper that he chanced to pass the door of an armourer and sent for his sword to be sharpened. The alfageme refused any payment till he should return as Count of Ourem. Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! The story adds that Nun’ Alvarez, returning Conde de Ourem to Santarem after the battle of Aljubarrota, found the armourer in prison as a friend of Castille and his property confiscated, and was able, by protecting him, to pay his debt.

Nun’ Alvarez now became one of the Prince of Avis’ Council, his most loyal and most trusted counsellor to the end of their lives. His first important command was in Alentejo, and after delaying in order to take part in a fight with eight Spanish ships in the Tagus he set out at the head of his two hundred horsemen. Henceforth Evora, the ancient walled city in the wide plain of Alentejo, was his headquarters. He instilled confidence into his men and increased his army, although it rarely exceeded five hundred horse and as many thousand foot, and was often very much below that number.

The war continued with varying success. At one time Nun’ Alvarez advanced to Badajoz, at another the Spanish were at Viana, but a couple of leagues from Evora across the flowered charneca. But Nun’ Alvarez seized town after town and more than once defeated the enemy in the open field. Monsaraz was taken by a wile, for some cows were driven temptingly beneath the walls and when the commander sallied out to seize them the Portuguese rushed in through the open gate. Nun’ Alvarez’ favourite method was to ride all night across the charneca and appear unexpectedly before a town in the early dawn, so that the enemy called him “Dawn Nuno,” Nuno Madrugada.

Thus he attacked Almada. He had but recently taken Palmella on the height overlooking the Tagus, and, hunting in the neighbourhood, had slain a boar and sent it as a present to the commander of Almada, promising to pay him a visit soon. He now set out to ride thither by night across the charneca, but they lost their way in the many paths, and the sun was up when Nun’ Alvarez, in his eagerness outriding his companions, advanced alone into the town. Four squires presently came up to his support, and Almada was taken without difficulty.

The Master of Avis had summoned Nun’ Alvarez to Lisbon or Nun’ Alvarez had determined to see the Master. From Palmella one night looking across the river he saw the whole city apparently in flames. Not knowing that the fires were lit by the King of Castille, whom plague in his camp had forced to raise the siege, and aware that the Master had powerful enemies within the walls, he watched the conflagration in dismay, but next morning the city reappeared in all its beauty.

The Spanish fleet remained in the Tagus, and a squire besought Nun’ Alvarez not to cross, saying that he had dreamt that the enemy had captured him as he passed through their fleet. Nun’ Alvarez went on his way, leaving the squire with his dream on the further shore. When he was in mid-stream, still perhaps thinking of the timid escudeiro, he bade his trumpets blow the enemy a challenge. But the Castilians little imagined what a prey was within their grasp, and his small boat passed through safely to Lisbon.

A little later he joined the Master of Avis at Torres Vedras and together they advanced to Coimbra, where the Master was crowned king as João I. His first act was to appoint Nun’ Alvarez his Constable.

At Oporto, whither he went to organise a fleet, Nun’ Alvarez found his wife and daughter, who had been prisoners of the Castilians for a time at Guimarães.

From Oporto he set out on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. His purpose was threefold, “to serve God in pilgrimage,” to reduce Minho on the way, and to secure mounts for his men. But the River Minho was too swollen to cross, and the news that Braga was wavering thus came opportunely. Leaving Viana do Castello he turned east along the beautiful valley of the Lima and seized the little granite town of Ponte do Lima and Braga on its steep hill. The King had also come north, but the news that King Juan had crossed the Beira frontier and was advancing rapidly into the heart of Portugal brought them south again.

At Abrantes the King held a council. Many were of opinion that he should not advance further against the enemy. Nun’ Alvarez—the same Nuno who had ridden alone into two hundred and fifty of the enemy on the banks of the Tagus and advanced alone into Almada—thereupon set out with his men, and in the name of God and Saint George sent a challenge to the King of Castille. Each fresh success of Nun’ Alvarez had raised him envious backbiters in Portugal, and here was a new opportunity to accuse him of arrogance. King João silenced his accusers by following him to Thomar.

They then went west to Ourem and took up a position towards Leiria. The advance of the King of Castille caused them to turn the front of their battle towards the little village of Aljubarrota. The Portuguese, barely 5,000 strong, were outnumbered seven to one, but they were drawn up on foot in a small compact force and desperate, flight being practically cut off. On the right was the Ala dos Namorados, the lovers’ wing, pledged to yield no inch of ground; on the left fought a few hundred English archers, gens-d’armes Anglois si peu qu’il en y avoit, says Froissart.

The Spanish chronicler and poet, Pero Lopez de Ayala, and Nun’ Alvarez’ brother Diogo rode over before the battle and asked to speak with him alone, but succeeded neither in winning him to their side nor in casting suspicion on his loyalty. As he had said when fighting against his brothers earlier in Alentejo, for the land that gave him birth he would fight against his own father.

At nine o’clock on the morning of August 15, 1385, the battle began with a great hurling of stones, followed by fighting with the lance, and then at still closer quarters with axe and sword. Nun’ Alvarez was constantly where the fight raged most fiercely, and his words “Fight, Portuguese, fight for king and country” kept ringing out above the din. The flower of Castilian chivalry fell that day and many Portuguese nobles fighting for Castille. Nun’ Alvarez saw his brother the Master of Calatrava fall pierced by a lance, but was never able to find his body. The King of Castille fled to Santarem. The Convent of Alcobaça still preserves a huge cauldron taken from the enemy at Aljubarrota, but the noblest memorial of Nun’ Alvarez’ victory is the Church and Monastery of Batalha.

Nun’ Alvarez, not yet as old as Napoleon when he conquered Italy, crossed the Guadiana with a few hundred horse and a few thousand foot and advanced into Castille. All the nobles from the south of Spain who had not been present at Aljubarrota collected to give him battle. The enemy, he was told, were as the grass of the field in number. “All the greater will be our honour,” said Nun’ Alvarez.

A trumpeter with a bundle of rods knelt before Nun’ Alvarez seated to receive him: “My Lord Constable, the Master of Santiago, my lord, sends to defy you with this rod,” and the Master of Calatrava, the Master of Alcantara, the Count of Medina Celi and many another had sent him rods of defiance. The Constable received them one by one patiently, gave the messenger a hundred gold pieces and bade him thank the senders for the rods with which he would presently come and beat them.

The battle of Valverde that followed was an attack of several hills from which the enemy had to be dislodged. “If Portuguese kneel in battle,” said a later, sixteenth-century historian, “it is to the Cross of Christ”; and certainly it was from no fear or weakness that Nun’ Alvarez, wounded by an arrow in the foot, knelt to pray in the thickest of the fight. Anxious messengers came up with news that his men were hard pressed, imploring his presence, but he, without answering, still knelt in prayer. At last rising with a look of great joy he ordered on his standard to the attack, and a few hours later no Spaniard was to be seen.

It was in memory of this battle that the Constable built the Church and Convent of Carmo, still in its ruins one of the most beautiful of Lisbon’s buildings. This was the last of his great battles, although he saw much more fighting (for peace with Castille did not come for many years), and when fifty-five years old took part in the expedition that conquered Ceuta.

But his abiding fame was won when he was twenty-five. His success was due to his singleness of purpose. The independence of Portugal was his object, and to secure that object he put forth his whole strength not only ungrudgingly, but with a passionate eagerness, his strength based on deep piety and faith. A keen judge of men, he was terrible in his calm disdain to those whom he suspected of shirking or treachery; without a word of abuse on his part he made their humiliation unbearable. But he inspired his followers with extraordinary devotion. His clear, piercing eyes and his self-possession gave them confidence—des yeux pleins de mitraille et un air de tranquillité—and he was always generous in rewarding constancy and valour. His energy, fearless courage and fervent serenity won many a fight against overpowering odds.

His fame extended throughout Spain. One evening near Caceres ten henchmen appeared before him. The Count received them kindly, and on hearing that they were from Castille asked how they were so bold as to come without safe-conduct. Relying on his great goodness, they said. He then asked what he could do for them, and they announced that their only object in coming was to see him, and now they had seen him; and so, refusing the supper he ordered for them, they departed as they had come.

Many incidents show his power over his own men. Once, when they were unwilling to go forward to attack a superior force, he just stepped across a stream and bade those who were willing to follow him cross it, and not one held back.

On another occasion an uproar arose in his camp owing to the fact that the day’s booty had consisted of “many and good wines.” The Constable came unarmed from his tent, but many soldiers, seeing him thus and hearing the noise, rushed forward to protect him and formed a canopy of swords over his head.

The irregular pay and supplies received for his men made it difficult to maintain strict discipline; for some days they lived entirely on figs, then as now one of the principal fruits south of the Tagus; for one whole day Nun’ Alvarez’ own food consisted merely of a piece of dry bread, a turnip, and a drink of wine from the flask of a common soldier. Another time there was no bread in the whole camp except five small loaves reserved for Nun’ Alvarez’ table; five starving Englishmen came up, and he entertained them to dinner, giving each a loaf of bread.

It was impossible in such circumstances to forbid or prevent plunder when it was obtainable. But, although he was obliged to allow his followers to live on the land, he set his face against any unnecessary pilfering, and one squire, convicted of taking a chalice from a church, he sentenced to be burnt—indeed, the wood was piled and the fire lit before he pardoned him at the instance of his captains.

In the teeth of great opposition, too, he resolutely forbade the presence of women in his camp.

He was not less renowned for his chivalry towards the weak, women, prisoners, and peasants, than for his victories in battle. He provided pensions for “women who had been honoured and prosperous and were now poor.”

But his chivalry went further. A countess at Coimbra who had held out against him, and then plotted to seize his person by treachery, he secured from the reprisals of his followers; the wife of the commander of a captured town he sent away free to Castille. And these were no isolated instances; his conduct never varied in its simplicity, dignity and charming thought for others.

His biographers love to tell of the poor blind man of Torres Vedras who had no way of escaping from the advancing Castilians and whom Nun’ Alvarez carried behind him on his mule for four leagues out of the town. “Oo que humano e caridoso señor!” exclaims the old chronicler.

But it is the incidents of an illness when he was between thirty and forty that throw most light on his character and on the devoted attachment of those around him. The fever and deep depression that came over him seem to have been in part, at least, due to the perpetual self-seeking and mendicity with which he had to deal now that he was a power in the land as great as the King himself—greater, said his enemies. Sometimes, we are told, he seemed to have recovered from his illness, and then the very sight of a stranger, especially of a man with a letter, would give him a relapse. His secretary found it necessary to intercept all letters.

Nun’ Alvarez, who had sought health in vain at Lisbon, set out to return to Evora. Accompanied by his mother and his daughter, he was carried in a litter to Palmella. His illness prevented him from going further, and he was taken to the small village of Alfarrara, where there were many trees and streams. The very sight of the garden of the quinta where he was to lodge seemed to restore his health. Several of the foremost citizens of Setubal came to welcome him, and he received them gladly; but, as they were leaving, one of them (who was very stout) had the misfortune to bid him “remember the town of Setubal.”

Nun’ Alvarez, thus reminded of “men with letters,” fell into so great a passion and fever that he was like to die. He refused to eat, and it was only after much coaxing that he was persuaded to sit down at table. They brought him water for his hands and roast birds to eat. His daughter began to carve them before him, and his mother fanned him with a fan; but he refused to eat, telling his mother that “that bloated churl with his Setubal has been the death of me.”

His secretary, Gil Airaz, would have excused the offender, but Nun’ Alvarez turned on him in a rage: “The fellow, for what he said, deserved a score of blows, and if you cared for me or my health you would have given him them.”

Gil Airaz said that there was still time, if that was his pleasure, and the Constable answered that such a pleasure would seem to him all too long in coming. So the secretary, in his presence, took a stick and went out. When he came back and told him how he had beaten and kicked and covered with mud and water the citizen of Setubal, Nun’ Alvarez seemed to recover instantly and began to eat and drink.

To any other man, lord of half Portugal, it might perhaps have seemed a little thing to have had a citizen beaten and rolled in a ditch, but presently Nun’ Alvarez stopped eating, his eyes filled with tears, and he began to wish he was dead. “Do you not see, Gil Airaz,” he said, “that it would have been better for me to die than that you should have done what you did to that good man?” “Now would to God I had no part of all that land that God and my Lord the King have given me, so that this thing were undone!”

When Gil Airaz saw that he was in earnest he told him how he had only made a pretence of having beaten the man of Setubal and how all the citizens had gone contentedly home. Nun’ Alvarez was so overjoyed at this that he rose straightway from the table and went out to the orchard and flowing streams. In three months, with the help of the King’s physicians, he was well, and going alone with a page he set to cutting the brushwood in front of him, and found his strength had returned.

There is something infinitely touching in this story about a man who was usually so calm and restrained that he might be in a passion of anger and only show it—to those who knew him—by his smile, and whose whole life was marked by exceptional strength of will. But his old vigour returned, and very soon he was challenging the Master of Santiago, begging him not to tire himself in advancing through so hot a country, as he, “Nun’ Alvarez Pereira, Count of Barcellos and of Ourem and of Arrayolos and Constable of my Lord the King of Portugal,” would save him the trouble.

The great grief of the latter part of his life was the death of his daughter Beatriz, Countess of Barcellos, and his life must have been lonely despite the friendship of the King and especially of Prince Duarte, heir to the throne. Before the expedition to Ceuta they went to ask his advice under pretext of consulting him about some dogs for the chase, so as to keep the secret of their enterprise. None better than the King knew the value of Nun’ Alvarez’ opinion. He always seemed to know precisely the right thing to be done and the right moment to do it, was as far removed from boasting and vanity as from false humility, and respected his own rights as well as those of others.

In charity he gave liberally, but never carelessly. Thus he yearly bestowed the same quantity of cloth, but bestowed it in different districts, and stored the corn from his estates, to be given away in years of scarcity.

Before the end of the fourteenth century (1393) he divided most of his land, that is a great part of Portugal, between his followers. Large portions of Tras-os-Montes, Minho, and Alentejo belonged to him. He was Count of Ourem, of Arrayolos and Barcellos, Lord of Braga, Guimarães, Chaves, Montalegre, and nearly a score of other towns. His policy of dividing these lands among his vassals under condition that they should maintain certain forces in his and the King’s service, proved unsatisfactory. Like the sated Marshals of Napoleon, they were subsequently less willing to leave their estates and risk their persons in battle.

The King, who had been too lavish in his gifts, proposed to buy back his grants of land. Other nobles agreed to sell, but Nun’ Alvarez was resolved not to brook the injustice, and, far from agreeing to the proposal, departed to Alentejo and gathered his followers with a view to leave Portugal, although, as he said, he would never serve any other king.

King João, thoroughly alarmed, sent the Bishop of Evora, the Dean of Coimbra and the Master of the Order of Avis post-haste after him. But Nun’ Alvarez then, as always when he seemed to be acting rashly on impulse, was carrying out a quick but well-reasoned decision, and was only with difficulty persuaded to a compromise. It was finally agreed that his vassals should be transferred to the King, while Nun’ Alvarez was to retain in his own hands most of his territorial possessions. Seven years after the victorious capture of Ceuta he again renounced them.

He had always been a man of great piety; after one of his victories he had gone barefoot in pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Assumar; he had founded churches throughout the country, heard mass twice or thrice daily, and would rise at midnight to pray the hours. But it was probably the death of his only daughter that moved him to retire to serve God in the monastery of Santa Maria do Carmo, which he had founded in memory of his victory of Valverde. There, on August 15, 1423, he professed as Frei Nuno de Santa Maria, after giving away all his lands and titles. Of his daughter’s three children, Isabel married the Infante João, Affonso became Conde de Ourem, and, later, Marquez de Valença, and Fernando, Conde de Arrayolos and, later, Duke of Braganza.

When Nun’ Alvarez, penniless, retired to his cell it was his purpose to beg his daily bread in the streets of Lisbon, and he also intended to end his days where he might be quite unknown; but Prince Duarte went to see him at the Carmo and affectionately ordered him to accept a pension from the King, a great part of which, however, he spent in charities.

In 1431, in his seventy-first year, and two years before his life-long friend, King João, the greatest of all Portugal’s great men died. “God grant him as much glory and honour as in this world was his,” says the old chronicle.

Surely no truer man or more chivalrous knight ever donned helmet or drew sword. Tradition says that the Lisbon people long assembled to sing songs and witness many miracles at his grave. But his fittest and most enduring monuments are the noble buildings of Carmo and Batalha, and, above all, a free and united Portugal.

PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR.

III
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR

(1394-1460)

Ca trabalho seria de se achar antre os vivos seu semelhante.—Gomez Eannez de Azurara, Cronica de Guiné.

Mestre insigne de toda a arte militar.—D. Francisco Manoel de Mello.

O homem a quem a Europa deve mais.—José Agostinho de Macedo, Motim Literario.

For some years before his death, Nun’ Alvarez might well rest satisfied with the prosperity which largely by his own exertions had fallen upon his country. Nor was it a careless or degenerate prosperity. The five noble sons of King João I and his English wife, Queen Philippa, daughter of “time-honoured Lancaster,” had grown to manhood, and the time was pregnant with great deeds. If Duarte was perhaps Nun’ Alvarez’ favourite among the princes, he certainly must have discerned in his younger brother his own successor in guiding the destinies of Portugal. Although possibly less chivalrous than Nun’ Alvarez, Prince Henry possessed his strong will and intensity of purpose, with a wider range of vision. A Portuguese writer represents him living in retirement at Sagres, his eyes fixed exclusively on Heaven; but Prince Henry believed that he could best serve Heaven by bringing to success the earthly affairs on which he had set his heart.

It was certainly with the keenness which marked the young Nun’ Alvarez that Henrique, then twenty-one, embarked with his father, King João I, and his brothers, Duarte and Pedro, in the expedition against Ceuta in 1415. He had his father’s promise that he should be the first to land, and in the storming of the town he was ever in the thickest of the fighting. The Moors defended the town obstinately, and a fresh danger arose when the victorious Portuguese dispersed to plunder. Henry, with a little band of seventeen followers, saved the situation against such odds that news was at first brought to the King that his son was dead. For his gallant behaviour on that day he was made Duke of Vizeu and Lord of Covilhã, while his brother Pedro became Duke of Coimbra.

But Henry returned from North-West Africa with perhaps a still greater prize—increased knowledge of the Dark Continent and a fixed determination to explore further a land which he now knew to be no mere sandy and unfertile desert. To this work he devoted the next forty-five years, without a shadow of turning, since political events might hamper but could not weaken his purpose, merely delaying the promised end.

It is often asked what was his object, as though the wish to win fresh knowledge, to acquire new territory for his country, and glory and riches, and to extend the Christian faith were unaccountable or unworthy aims. Rather we cannot wonder that the discoveries became the absorbing passion of his life, so that he has been blamed for his lukewarm intervention in contemporary politics and his weak defence of his brother, the Duke of Coimbra.

On the discoveries as Grand Master of the Order of Christ he spent its princely revenues, and in 1418, retiring from the Court, he settled on the Sacred Cape, or Sagres, now Cape St. Vincent. His palace and observatory soon drew a village round it, known as Terça Naval, or the Villa do Infante (Princestown). Here, as Governor of Algarve, he spent the greater part of his life, fitting out ships in Lagos harbour, welcoming travellers, poring over maps brought to him by Prince Pedro and others from their travels, observing the heavens, and watching for the return of his ships.

His keenness was not inconsistent with a certain shyness and reserve. He was a student prince, but less literary and more scientific than his brothers. All day, and often far into the night, he would be at work, an energetic hermit such as the Middle Ages had not known. His eyes in the intensity and even fierceness of their glance repelled the timid, but they also had the far-away look as of one watching and dreaming, while his firm lips and jaws were those of one planning and willing. His iron will and self-discipline curbed his equally strong temper and impatient eagerness, so that when most moved to anger he would merely say, like an Irishman, “I leave you to God.”

Courageous and persistent, he prepared all his schemes with the utmost thoroughness, and all the help that science could afford, and he carried them out with unfaltering resolution. All through his life he acted up to his French motto, Talent de bien faire, which we may translate by the “love of useful glory” to which, according to the poet Thomson, he roused mankind. And if we do not sit cowering before the unknown on all sides it is to Prince Henry and a few men of similarly keen intellect and stout will that we owe it.

It must not be thought that he met with no opposition, apart from the great difficulties that naturally beset all discoverers and innovators. On the one hand, the perils of navigating down the coast of Africa were considered insurmountable, and, on the other, the gains to be derived from it were held to be nugatory. It was not till the first slaves and the first gold arrived that men began to realise thoroughly that Prince Henry was something more than an empty dreamer. No one with less faith, a faith based both on religion and science, would have persevered, as Prince Henry persevered, in face of the slight support at first given by public opinion and the slight success obtained. But, although there were many disappointments and progress was slow, the mysteries of the African coast did gradually recede before his persistency, as year after year he sent out ships with definite instructions based on his maps and scientific knowledge.

The death of King João I in 1433 did not seriously interfere with his plans; his brother Duarte gave him every possible support, and the expedition against Tangier in 1437 was not an interruption but rather one aspect of his life-work. Indeed, he was the leading spirit of the enterprise. He and his younger brother, Fernando, obtained from King Duarte the consent for which they had ceased to hope from their father; but Duarte at first, and Pedro throughout, were opposed to the expedition. It set out in August, and the little army of some six thousand men disembarked at Ceuta, and, without waiting for the ships to return to Portugal for reinforcements, marched to attack Tangier.

Failing to take the place by storm, the princes settled down to blockade it. The danger of such a course was obvious, but even when the Moors, who trooped down from the hinterland, outnumbered the Christian force by twenty to one they were driven back in a series of magnificent attacks. But the Moorish host continued to grow by scores of thousands daily, and in the second week of October it became apparent even to the fiery heart of Prince Henry that he was embarked on a hopeless enterprise.

The siege was raised and the small army attempted to regain their ships. Henry with the cavalry protected their retreat. But the cowardice of some, the treachery of others, and the overwhelming number of the enemy proved too much for his splendid defence, and on October 15 he was forced to come to an agreement with the enemy. By this capitulation the Portuguese were to be allowed to re-embark without their arms, Ceuta, their twenty-two years’ possession, was to be given up, and Prince Fernando, with certain other hostages, was to remain in the hands of the enemy until the Portuguese should have evacuated the town.

Prince Henry, in his despair, fell ill at Ceuta and afterwards retired to Sagres. He would not give up Ceuta, and he could not save Fernando otherwise. King Duarte, confronted by the same cruel alternative, succumbed to grief and illness at Thomar in the following year.

To Henry’s sorrow for the death of one brother and the living death of another—the tortures of Fernando’s captivity ended in a miserable dungeon in 1443—was added the crushing of his hopes and projects. For the new King was but a boy, and it needed no peculiar foresight to prophesy impending trouble in Portugal. It required all Prince Henry’s fortitude and faith to persevere, in loneliness and remorse. Prince Pedro had strongly opposed the expedition: it was on Henry that its failure rested. Nor was he one to wish to shirk responsibility, and many an hour he must have spent brooding over the fatal effects of his rashness.

Henry is too great a man to need to have his mistakes glossed over. He had underestimated the difficulty of the enterprise, he had been rash in advancing from Ceuta without awaiting reinforcements, he had been rasher in not retiring after the first unsuccessful attempt to scale the walls of Tangier. His object certainly had been a noble one, based on no personal greed or ambition, and the results of his failure were felt by none more than by himself. In the eyes of others his magnificent courage and steadfast retreat placed him even higher than before.

Fortunately for him, there was plenty of work ready to his hand, for, although he did not personally accompany the ships of exploration, he scientifically worked out their instructions, equipped them, and followed their progress on his maps. Perhaps a certain estrangement between Pedro and Henry was natural after 1437; Henry, at least, did not very actively support his brother in his quarrel with the Queen-Regent, and failed to stand by him later when he had resigned his Regency and was venomously attacked and slandered by his enemies before his weak son-in-law, King Affonso V. When the matter came to open conflict Pedro, with his small band of followers, could not hope for victory, and again Henry did not resolutely intervene. Pedro’s tragic death at Alfarrobeira in 1449 cannot have diminished Henry’s remorse for the death of Duarte and Fernando eleven and six years earlier.

Meanwhile, his austere devotion to the work of discovery bore increasing fruit, and before he died the rich islands of the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde were discovered, and the coast of Africa explored as far as Sierra Leone, which was reached by the famous Venetian, Luigi Cadamosto, in the service of Prince Henry, nearly a quarter of a century after Gil Eannez had rounded Cape Bojador in 1434. The Infante himself had lost little of his energy, and although nearly sixty-five, accompanied his nephew Affonso V in the expedition against Morocco in 1558, and took a prominent part in the siege and capture of Alcacer.

The last two years of his life were spent at Sagres. In September 1460 he disposed of certain of his revenues, potential rather than actual, to the Order of Christ and to the State, which had hitherto recognised his right to receive the profits of the discoveries as it had allowed him to bear its burden. The burden to the day of his death was far greater than the profits. Yet he must have realised that his life’s purpose was attained, and that the rest was but a matter of time, as surely as though he had planted an orange-tree and died when it was covered with blossom. His body was taken to Batalha, and, if it was not to remain on Cape St. Vincent looking southwards over the sea to Africa, no worthier resting-place could be found for it than the splendid church built to commemorate the victory of his father and of his friend Nun’ Alvarez. Prince Henry spent himself, his time, and his revenues without stint in the service of a great idea and a high ambition. Nun’ Alvarez had worked for the independence of Portugal; Prince Henry left it well on the road to an imperishable glory.

A generation later, when the full effects of his life’s work were manifest, his countrymen and the world recognised in this strong, tenacious ascetic, with his burning zeal for God and country, his fearlessness and unwavering devotion, the inspirer and origin of Portugal’s new greatness.

VASCO DA GAMA

IV
VASCO DA GAMA

(1460?-1524)

O qual Vasco da Gama era homem prudente e de bom saber e de grande animo para todo bom feito.—Gaspar Correa, Lendas da India.

King João II pressed on vigorously with the discovery of the west coast of Africa. The year of his accession was not ended before Diogo de Azambuja set out with ten ships (1481), and after his return the King assumed the title of “Lord of Guinea.” Diogo Cam in 1484 and 1485 carried the discovery still further, past the River of Crabs (Cameroons), past Congo and Angola to Walvisch Bay, and two years later Bartholomeu Diaz rounded the Cape, and with that the problem of the sea-route to India was practically solved, so that King John died (October 1495) in sight of the promised land. Indeed, the departure of the ships which Vasco de Gama was destined to command was only delayed by the King’s death. He had given “orders for such wood to be cut in wood and forest as the carpenters and builders should desire, and this was brought to Lisbon, where at once three small ships were begun.”

In appointing Vasco da Gama, a knight of his household, to the command King Manoel showed that he knew the value of the men who had grown up in the stern school of João II. The Gamas were a distinguished family of the south of Portugal; they had already rendered good service to the State—Vasco himself may have had a part in the work of discovering the coast of Africa—and if they were at times quarrelsome and unruly their loyalty and courage were never in doubt. In 1497 the meekest of them, Paulo, Vasco’s eldest brother, was in trouble for having wounded a judge at Setubal,[5] and received the King’s pardon before he sailed as captain of one of the ships.

Vasco, a man of medium height and knightly bearing, was bold and daring in enterprise, patient and determined in adversity, but harsher and more irascible than his brother. It is a curious instance of the continuous if often slight connection between the two nations of seafarers, the English and the Portuguese, that Vasco da Gama had English blood in his veins. The name of his mother, Isabel Sodré, which survives in Lisbon’s Caes do Sodré, was a corruption of Sudley, her grandfather having been Frederick Sudley, of the family of the Earls of Hereford. Vasco was born probably in 1460, in the little sea-town of Sines, of which his father was Alcaide Môr, and in honour of which Vasco later is said to have been in the habit of firing a salute as he passed.

The third captain appointed by King Manoel was Nicolao Coelho.

The three ships, of about a hundred tons, São Gabriel (Vasco da Gama), São Raphael (Paulo da Gama), and São Miguel[6] (Nicolao Coelho), after solemn procession and leave-taking of the King, on July 8, 1497, sailed down the Tagus from Belem and rounded Cape Espichel to the south. The crews averaged little over fifty men, being perhaps 170 in all, including six convicts in each ship to be cast ashore in order to spy out the land at different points. Bartholomeu Diaz, bound for the fortress of São Jorge da Mina, accompanied them as far as the Cape Verde Islands.

In November they reached the bay of St. Helena where Vasco da Gama was slightly wounded in an affray with the natives. Hitherto their voyage had been prosperous; but they encountered heavy storms both before and after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and it required all Vasco’s resolution and Paulo’s persuasiveness to keep the crews to their voyage. The mutinous crew of the São Gabriel had counted without its host, and found Gama little less formidable than the storms of these unknown seas. Not if he were confronted with a hundred deaths, he said, and not if the ships were all filled with gold, would he go back a single yard; but he did not wholly disregard the murmurings of the men, for he clapped the mate and pilot of his ship in irons, to hold them as hostages, and, as they were the only persons who knew anything of the art of navigation, the crew was effectually cowed.

At Christmas they reached the land which to this day bears the Portuguese name, Natal, of the time of its discovery. Passing slowly north along the coast, they arrived towards the end of January at the Zambezi River, and in this shelter made a stay of several weeks; but scurvy among the crew forced them again to sea, and in the beginning of March they reached Mozambique. Here, as at Mombasa a month later, the natives received them with every appearance of friendship, but made a treacherous if rather courageous attempt to seize their ships. The King of Melinde, a little further north, was friendly and loyal, and here the Portuguese obtained pilots for the voyage to India.

The passage lasted less than a month, and on May 18 they sighted Asia, the end and object of their enterprise, and came to anchor off Calicut on the 21st. Calicut was a few miles distant, and Vasco da Gama, although implored by his brother not to risk his person by disembarking, started on the overland journey. It required some courage, for among the native sightseers who crowded round the Portuguese there were not a few armed and covertly hostile Moors.

In the minds of the Portuguese, the East had long been connected with the empire of the Christian Prester John, the half mythical ruler of Abyssinia, and they expected to find the majority of the natives Christians. Accordingly they were easily duped here (as indeed they had been in Africa) and Vasco da Gama and his companions on the way to Calicut worshipped in a Hindu pagoda. The images on the walls were unlike those of the saints to which they had been accustomed in Portugal. Some of them had four arms, the teeth of others protruded a whole inch from their mouths, and their faces were hideous as the faces of devils. Like Little Red Ridinghood, one of the Portuguese, João de Sá, was in the most serious doubt when he saw these figures, and, as he knelt down, in order to avoid any mistake, he said aloud “If this is a devil I worship the true God.” And Vasco da Gama looked across at him and smiled.

A che guardando il suo duca sorrise.

This does not tally well with the character of the disciplinarian, despotic Gama, as it is usually represented. But these qualities developed later.

The Portuguese were as ignorant about the King of the country as about its gods. For the Samuri of Calicut was no simple King of Melinde, but a great potentate accustomed to traders and to foreign civilisations. It was not without difficulty that Gama obtained an interview, and when he succeeded, the King, all aglow with jewellery, seated chewing betel, a page on either side, and his chief Brahman behind his chair, was fully a match for the haughty Gama. From one of his bracelets gleamed a priceless stone of a thumb’s thickness, his necklace was of pearls almost of the size of small acorns, and from a gold chain hung a heart-shaped jewel surrounded by pearls and covered with rubies, and in the centre a great green stone, an emerald, of the size of a large bean, belonging to the ancient treasure of the Kings of Calicut. His golden trumpets were longer by a third than those of the King of Portugal.

It appears that the Portuguese had brought no present worthy of so great a monarch. The same historian, Correa, who thus vividly describes the King’s appearance, also gives a detailed account of the present. It consisted, he says, of “a very delicate piece of scarlet, and a piece of crimson velvet, and a piece of yellow satin and a chair richly upholstered with brocade, with silver-gilt nails, and a cushion of crimson satin with tassels of gold thread, and another cushion of red satin for the feet, and a very richly wrought gilt ewer and basin, and a large and very beautiful gilt mirror and fifty red caps with buttons and veils of crimson silk and gold thread upon them, and fifty gilt sheaths of Flemish knives, which had been inlaid in Lisbon with ivory.”

The King should have been satisfied, but probably this present, if it ever existed, had dwindled in gifts to natives of Africa on the way. The question in the King’s mind was that asked once of Telemachus: Had they come as peaceful traders, or were they pirates?

Vasco da Gama, faced by a reception so courteous yet so insulting, maintained a proud, serene attitude, as he had when on his way to the palace—he is represented advancing slowly, waiting for the crowds to be cleared out of his way—and as he did later when placed under arrest by the Catual, or Governor of the city. By his resolution during the dangers and obstacles of the voyage and by his calm behaviour in Calicut he justified the King’s choice and his subsequent fame.

The Samuri himself was far more favourably inclined to the new-comers than were the Moors, who naturally resented the appearance of other traders. The Portuguese were greatly helped throughout by a Mohammedan who had learnt Spanish at Tunis, but, although Gama brought home specimens of pepper, ginger, cloves, musk, benjamin, and other spices as well as pearls and rubies, his visit to Calicut, which ended with the high-handed measure of seizing and carrying off several natives, was unsuccessful, since it resulted in no treaty of friendship or commerce.

At the end of August they started on the homeward voyage, but remained for some time off the coast of India, and in the Indian Ocean lay becalmed for many days, during which the crew again suffered terribly from scurvy, a considerable number dying. The remnant of the crews struggled on in their three ships towards Portugal; at Cabo Verde, Coelho separated from the others and carried the news to King Manoel (July 1499). Paulo da Gama was worn out by anxiety and exertions, and Vasco sailed with him north-west to the Azores, where, in the island of Terceira, Paulo died. It was not till the end of the summer that Vasco da Gama reached the Tagus.

It is said—although Coelho’s earlier arrival contradicts the story—that a Terceira trader, Arthur Rodriguez, about to sail from his island to Algarve, saw two ships at anchor and asked whence they were. “From India,” came the answer. At these magic words he set sail, not, however, to Algarve, but due East, and in four days cast anchor in the harbour of Cascaes. The King was at Sintra, and had just sat down to supper when Rodriguez hurried in with the good news.

When the few survivors[7] arrived at Lisbon (September 1499) they were given a splendid reception, and Vasco da Gama was never able to complain that his services went unrewarded. He was granted the coveted title of Dom, and became hereditary Admiral of India, while his pensions (300,000 réis a year) and facilities of trade with India made him one of the richest men in the realm. So powerful did he become in Sines that the Order of Santiago interfered, with the result that Gama was obliged to leave his native town and in 1507 went to live at Evora.[8] In November 1519 the Duke James of Braganza sold him the town of Vidigueira, of which Gama became first Count.

A large part of his triumph belonged to Prince Henry, to King João II, and to Bartholomeu Diaz, who was drowned in the following year off the Cape which he had been the first to round.

King Manoel, overjoyed at having attained the goal of nearly a century’s constant striving, now styled himself not only King of Portugal and the Algarves and Lord of Guinea but Lord of the Navigation, Conquest, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India; he sent word of the discovery to the Pope and all the princes of Christendom; and at Belem, on the right bank of the Tagus, whence the discoverers had set sail over two years before, he built the fine monastery of São Jeronimo, where now are the tombs of the King himself, of Dom Vasco, who brought him all this glory, and of Camões, who celebrated it in deathless verse.

The building stands in strange contrast to that of Batalha, where Prince Henry the Navigator lies buried. The pure Gothic of Batalha, with its magnificent plain pillars and soaring arches, spells heroic aspiration; the Manueline of Belem in its exuberance and rich profusion of detail bears traces of satisfied accomplishment, as though Portugal might now throw simplicity and austere endeavour to the winds.

Dom Vasco da Gama in February 1502 set sail a second time for India, and returned in September 1303 with the first tribute of gold from India. “As the King was then at Lisbon, Dom Vasco, when he went to see him, took the tribute which he had received from the King of Quiloa[9]. A nobleman in plain doublet with uncovered head went before the Admiral on horseback in great solemnity, carrying the gold in a large basin of silver, to the sound of drums and trumpets, and in company of all the gentlemen of the Court. And the King ordered a monstrance to be wrought of it, as rich in workmanship as in weight, and offered it to Our Lady of Bethlehem as first fruits of those victories of the East.”

The death of Paulo da Gama seems to have killed the gentler strain in Vasco’s nature, and his many honours, titles, and estates rendered him more overbearing. It was on his second voyage to India, in October 1502, that he blew up a peaceful trading ship from Mecca with 380 (or by another account, 240) men on board, besides many women and children, after relieving it of all gold and merchandise. As to his overweening pride, he is said to have signed himself Count in a letter to the King before the title had been actually conferred.

Despite the crying need for a strong man to restore discipline in India after Albuquerque’s death, King Manoel did not send Dom Vasco out as Governor, and it was only in the reign of King João III, and when Gama was over sixty, that he left Lisbon, in April 1524, as Viceroy of India, with his sons Estevão and Paulo and a force of 3,000 men. He reached Goa in September and presently proceeded to Cochin. He was resolved to bring some measure of order and justice out of the confusion and corruption of India; and whereas most other Governors on their arrival were too busily occupied in enriching themselves to pay careful attention to other matters, Gama bent his whole will to effect reforms.

The reforms were salutary, but they filled native and Portuguese alike with consternation and were decreed in a harsh, unconciliatory spirit. Gama came into conflict with the outgoing Governor, Dom Duarte de Meneses, and only reduced him to obedience by giving orders to bombard him in his ship.

The first three months of Gama’s vice-royalty proved that the task of reforming the rule of the Portuguese in India was work for a younger man, and on Christmas Day 1524, to the relief of the self-seekers, to the grief of those who cared for the future of their country, Dom Vasco da Gama died, exactly twenty-seven years after the sight of Natal had given him the first real promise of success in his earlier great adventure.