The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 10

by Unknown

CHAPTER II. THE PERIOD OF GLORY AND DISCOVERY

[1383-1521 A.D.]

By the death of Ferdinand, his daughter Beatrice, queen of Castile, was the true heir to the throne of Portugal. But the kingdom, far from expecting a foreign yoke, had, on the marriage of the infanta, expressly stipulated that, in case of Ferdinand’s death, the government should be vested in a regent, until she had a son capable of assuming the sovereignty; that son, too, to be educated not in Castile but in Portugal. When that event happened, she had no child—a circumstance that induced her husband to claim the crown in her right, and that filled the Portuguese with vexation. They were satisfied neither with their intended sovereign, Juan, nor with the regent, Leonora, the queen-mother, whom the will of the late king appointed to that dignity. And when, in conformity with the demands of the Castilian, Beatrice was proclaimed in Lisbon, the people either exhibited a mournful silence, or cried out that they would have no other king than their infante João, son of Pedro and Iñes de Castro, and the unfortunate husband of Maria, sister of Leonora, whose tragical fate has been recorded. But João and his brother Diniz now languished in the dungeons of Castile,[144] whither they had been consigned by the king, who knew that, if suffered to enter Portugal, they would speedily thwart his views of dominion. Until these princes could be restored to their country, and until Beatrice should have an heir, the Portuguese resolved to deprive the queen-mother of the regency, in favour of Dom João, the grand-master of Aviz, who alone seemed able to defend their national independence.

[1383-1384 A.D.]

Dom João, as before observed, was an illegitimate son of King Pedro, by a lady of Galicia, and born in 1357. At seven years of age he had been invested with the high dignity of grand-master, and his education intrusted to one of the ablest commanders of the order. No man could be better adapted for the conjuncture in which circumstances placed him. Cool, yet prompt; prudent, yet in the highest degree courageous; unrestrained by conscience, and ready to act either with cunning or violence, according as either appeared necessary to his purpose, he would indeed have been a formidable opponent to any sovereign, much more to one so weak as the Castilian. Seeing the favourable disposition of the people, and confiding in his own mental resources, he commenced a policy which, if at first cautious, was sure to prove efficacious. Though Leonora pretended great sorrow for her husband’s death, and endeavoured, by affected mildness, as well as by an administration truly liberal, to win the popular favour, her object was penetrated and despised. But a stronger sentiment was felt for Andeiro, who directed her at his pleasure, and whose death was now decreed by the grand-master. To remove the latter under some honourable pretext from court, he was charged by Leonora with the government of Alemtejo. He accepted the trust; but, accompanied by twenty-five resolute followers, returned to Lisbon, December 6th, 1383, and hastened to the royal apartments, where he knew he should find Andeiro. The guilty pair were as usual together. João struck the count with a dagger; a knight of his suite by a second blow deprived the victim of life.

The tragical deed was hailed with characteristic acclamations by the populace, who, profiting by the example, massacred everyone suspected to be hostile to the pretensions of their new idol, among them the bishop of Lisbon.[145] Their mangled corpses remained long without sepulture, a prey to dogs and beings more savage than dogs. Leonora now fled from the city to Alemquer. On the way, she turned her eyes for a moment back on the towers of that capital, and, in the bitterness of her heart prayed that she might live to see it wrapped in flames. After her departure, João complained that he was unequal to oppose his powerful enemies; and pretended that he would retire into England, to pass his remaining days in tranquillity. This hypocritical policy alarmed the mob, who dreaded being abandoned to justice, and tumultuously flocked around him, insisting that he should assume the regency until Beatrice should become the mother of a son destined to rule over them. With much apparent reluctance, he accepted the proffered dignity, in the resolution of securing one much higher.

The first measures of the new regent were characteristic of the man. He published an edict in which entire pardon was promised to all criminals, whatever their offences, who should assist him in opposing the queen and the Spaniards. At this unexpected call, great numbers—amounting, we are told, to thousands—hastened from their prisons or their haunts to swell his army. Many of the great towns were persuaded to follow the example of Lisbon. The impunity with which his followers perpetrated every possible crime was too alluring not to increase the number. Murder, plunder, rape, and sacrilege were the constant attendants of this lawless party. The abbess of the convent of Castres was dragged from her cloister, poniarded before the high altar, and her body was subjected to brutalities of which not even the mention would be tolerated by the reader. In the end it was dragged to a public square, and there left. This is but one instance, among numbers which have been preserved and among thousands of which the memory has perished, of the monstrous crimes of this interregnum; yet no attempt was made to punish them by the regent, who felt that the license thus allowed was his only tenure on the attachment of his adherents.

The king of Castile invaded the kingdom, received the submission of several places, and penetrated to Santarem, to concert with his mother-in-law, Leonora, the means of annihilating the resources of João. But that ambitious woman, who perceived that with the arrival of the king her authority had ceased, soon regarded his cause with indifference, ultimately with dislike. Her intrigues were planned more frequently to thwart than to aid his measures; so that, aware of her faithless character, he at length caused her to be arrested and to be confined in the convent of Tordesillas, near Valladolid.

[1384-1411 A.D.]

As allusion has already been made [in the history of Spain, Chapter V] to the chief events of the present war, little more remains to be said of them. Though Lisbon was invested both by sea and land, and in a few months reduced to the greatest distress, it was defended with equal ability and valour by the grand-master and his captains. To end the distractions of his country, the states, early in 1385, were convoked at Coimbra. There the creatures of the regent proposed his proclamation as king, as the only measure capable of restoring internal tranquillity, and of enabling the nation to withstand the arms of Castile. They even endeavoured to show that he was the nearest heir to the crown. The issue of Iñes de Castro they set aside, as sprung from an adulterous connection; and the same objection they urged against Beatrice, whose mother they considered as the lawful wife, not of the late king, but of the lord de Pombeiro. On the 6th day of April, 1385, João was unanimously proclaimed king.

João I, having attained the great object of his ambition, vigorously prepared for the war with his rival of Castile. The decisive victory gained by João at Aljubarrota; the alternations of success and failure that succeeded; the arrival of the duke of Lancaster to obtain the Castilian crown in right of his wife Constanza, daughter of Pedro the Cruel: the alliance between the two princes, João marrying Philippa, a daughter of the duke; the subsequent reconciliation between the latter and the king of Castile, cemented by the marriage of the princess Catherine, daughter of the Plantagenet, with Henry, son of Juan, and other transactions of these troubled times, have already been noticed in the history of Spain. Peace was made and broken more than once; the success lay with the Portuguese king—a success, however, attributable as much to the internal troubles of Castile after the death of Juan I as to the valour of João. When a more durable peace was concluded in 1403, the Portuguese had recovered their fortunes, and were in possession of Badajoz.

The next few years were passed in tranquillity by the king in improving the administration of the realm. His salutary severity was above all directed against murderers and robbers by profession, and also against such as took justice into their own hands. By these means he became a popular monarch with all but some of his nobles, whose discontent he had powerfully excited during the late wars. To his valiant constable, Dom Nunho Alvares Pereiro, called the “holy constable,” he was more indebted than to any other cause, both for his crown and for the successful issue of the Castilian war; and he had thought no rewards too great for such services. But if he showered the revenues of whole towns and vast estates on that able and faithful man, he rewarded with a pitiful spirit the attachment of others.

THE TAKING OF CEUTA (1415 A.D.)

[1411-1415 A.D.]

By his queen Philippa, daughter of the duke of Lancaster, João had several children, of whom five were sons. As these princes grew in years, they displayed great martial ardour, and promised to become the bulwarks of the country and throne. He had resolved to confer on them the honour of knighthood, and to celebrate the occasion by a magnificent tournament. But they despised the peaceful lists, and besought his permission to win their spurs in a nobler manner, by an expedition against the Moors. The fortress of Ceuta[146], on the African side of the straits of Gibraltar, seemed to them the most inviting of conquests. Though eager to gratify a propensity which he loved, the king was at first startled by the magnitude of the proposed enterprise. The fortifications of Ceuta were strong, and defended by the bravest portion of the Mohammedan population: to reduce them a considerable armament must be prepared, and at an expense which he was loath to incur. In the end, however, he yielded to their urgent entreaties; the expedition was resolved, two confidential officers were sent to reconnoitre the place, and the royal council gave a reluctant consent to the project. But, as secrecy alone could insure its success, as a premature disclosure of the design would have enabled the pirates to increase the number of their defenders and the strength of their works, the whole peninsula was in suspense, and not without alarm at the preparations of the king. Having tranquillised the Castilians, the Aragonese, and the Moors of Granada, as to his intentions, and fearful of rousing the suspicions of the Africans, he intimated that his armament was to be led against the count of Holland. Not even the death of his queen, who was carried off by the plague,[147] nor his advanced years, could suspend his preparations. At length, having collected a considerable number of vessels from most parts, and been joined by adventurers from most nations of Europe, accompanied by his sons and his chief nobles, João embarked, proceeded towards the straits, and, the middle of August, 1415, arrived before Ceuta. The Moorish governor, Salat ben Salat, a man advanced in years but of undaunted courage, prepared for a vigorous defence.[e]

“So soon as the Moors of the town,” writes the contemporary historian Azurara,[d] “saw the fleet nearing their walls, they placed lighted torches in all the windows and apertures to show the Christians that they were much more numerous than they thought, and thus on account of its great size, and being illuminated on all sides, the town presented a beautiful sight. This was interpreted by our men in the ships to signify that as a dying candle first throws out great light, so these men, who soon were to leave their houses and property, and many of them to quit this life, made this brave show of light, signifying their approaching end. As these Moors illuminated the town, so also our men lighted up their ships, but this they were compelled to do, not to show their vast numbers, but that each ship having cast anchor should be enabled to make preparations for the following day, and with the lanterns in front of the flag ships, and the torches the men carried in their hands, the fleet was well illuminated.”

A spectacle as dazzling as it was sinister, by the light of which the waters of the strait must have presented a terrible and fantastic appearance, reddened by the reflection of the torches as though a sea of blood, covered with dancing lights, separated the Moorish city from the floating Christian camp. At dawn on the following day, the 20th of August, the Portuguese were ready for the combat, and the king, João I, in a galiot went about among the ships giving the last instructions, recommending to all that Dom Henry should be the first to land.

But as the Moors had sailed out of the town to attack the Portuguese upon the landing, some of the knights became so impatient that two at least, João Fogaca and Ruy Gonçalves, jumped on shore a few moments before the prince, who, however, took the lead in the battle. The movement of the Moors in coming down to the shore was a vain attempt of the younger men; the truth was that, following the example of Salat ben Salat, they were greatly discouraged, and panic increased among them upon seeing two athletes of Barbary, two giants of the desert, overcome, one by Ruy Gonçalves, and the other by Vasco Martius de Albergaria. The infante Dom Henry fancied he caught sight of his brother Dom Duarte, whom Dom João had forbidden to take part in the combat, in the thickest of the fight, and presently discovered that he had not been mistaken. The presence of the two brothers if possible raised the courage of the Portuguese still more.

Dom Henry wished to await the landing of the rest of the army, as he had been recommended to do, but Dom Duarte was of opinion that they might enter the town with the Moors, or at least seize the gate of Almina to open a passage for their men. The gate was indeed taken by surprise. Having passed the gate, the two infantes took up their position on a hill dominating the streets of the city.

A Portuguese Woman of the Fifteenth Century

Meanwhile Vasco Fernandes de Athaide had succeeded in beating down another gate, thus opening a new passage to the Portuguese soldiers, who were now divided into three bands. To have greater freedom, the heir to the crown threw off his armour, leaving merely a coat of mail; his movements being thus made freer he was able to advance rapidly, so that when Dom Henry resolved to follow his example he could no longer find him. Dom Duarte had reached the highest point of the Moorish town, called Cesto, and Dom Henry, wishing to join him, entered the street leading to it, driving the Moors before him.

The general landing of the army had not yet taken place, as Dom João I had not finished his review of the fleet. When he sent his son Dom Pedro to tell Dom Duarte to land, the answer came that he was already within the town. The king then gave orders for all to land, and the Portuguese army, divided into four bodies, marched upon the town.

The affliction of the women who fled, pressing their little children to their breasts, and the despair with which many men concealed their property, or fled carrying it with them, raised the courage of the Moorish warriors, and spurred them to make one supreme effort by which they succeeded in driving many Portuguese before them. Dom Henry would not check the first fugitives in their flight, for fear of harming those who followed, who would consequently be thrown back on the Moors, but when the latter approached, followed by a few knights, he barred the way. At the same time, ashamed of their fear and encouraged by the infante’s presence, the Portuguese returned to the charge, and the enemy fled in confusion. Meanwhile the Moors received reinforcements and renewed the fight, but were again repulsed by the Portuguese, encouraged by the infante.

The Moors falling back, the infante, followed only by seventeen of his men, pursued them; a desperate fight ensued, principally because the Moors attempted to carry off a Portuguese knight, whom the infante wished to recover. The Moors finally gave way, but the infante Dom Henry found himself shut in by the ruinous walls of the town, with only five knights at his side. Heroically maintaining his difficult position, he waited in vain for reinforcements; he was believed to be dead, until he was at last found by a Portuguese knight.

The infante wished to remain in his dangerous position until reinforcements reached him, but the entreaties addressed to him in the name of his father and Dom Duarte induced him to retreat; he proceeded to join his father at a mosque. Meanwhile the sun had set, and seeing a flight of sparrows resting upon the towers of the fort, the Portuguese inferred that the Moors had abandoned it. Salat ben Salat had fled with the garrison. They thereupon raised the flag of St. Vincent, patron of Lisbon, on the top of the fortress. The conquest was won; the loss on the side of the Moors was heavy, but the Portuguese loss was trifling; we will not however quote any number as great doubts exist on the subject.

On the following day the Moors appeared once more before the fortress; Dom Duarte and the constable sallied out to encounter them; these vain attacks were repeated, but the king strictly forbade his heir to take part in these skirmishes.

On the first Sunday the king decided to hear mass with his sons in the principal mosque of the town, already purified. Two bells pealed joyously from the highest tower. “How is this?” asked the major. The reply is not uninteresting: the town of Lagos had been a few years previously attacked by the Moors, who sacked the place and carried away these bells, and concealed them, but now discovered, they summoned the Christians to divine service.

The service was celebrated with great solemnity; Dom João knighted his sons, Dom Duarte, Dom Pedro, and Dom Henry. On their side João I’s sons knighted various valiant noblemen of their retinue. The aim of the expedition was realised, and the African lion began to give way before the power of Portugal.[f]

The government of the place was at first offered to a valiant knight, Martin Alfonso de Mello; and when he declined the dangerous honour, it was solicited and obtained by one of greater prowess still, Dom Pedro de Menezes, founder of the illustrious house of Villa Real. Having left a small but select garrison in Ceuta, and provided for the defence of the place against the inevitable assaults of the Moors, João re-embarked, and with the remainder of the armament returned to Lisbon.

[1415-1419 A.D.]

The heroism of the governor, Dom Pedro, and of the horsemen he commanded, is the constant and enthusiastic theme of praise by the national writers. The number of skirmishes which he was compelled to sustain during the three years immediately following the reduction of Ceuta is said, no doubt hyperbolically, to have exceeded the number of days. It is certain that during his government the place was frequently assailed by the whole power of the African Moors, aided by the fleet of their brethren of Granada. Sometimes the garrison by sorties obtained considerable booty, especially in flocks and herds. This warfare was as horrid as it was picturesque. When the Christian hidalgos and Almagaveres arrived at the village which they had been ordered to destroy, and the inhabitants of which were sure to be sunk in sleep, they generally divided into two or three bands, forced the doors of the houses, which they set on fire, and either massacred such as attempted to escape, or forced them back into the flames. The sudden conflagration, the shrieks of the women and children, rendered still more dismal by the silence of night, and the bloody figures of the assailants, gazing with ferocious joy on the scene before them, bore a character too demoniacal for this world. When all was finished, when the flames were expiring, and the last groan had pierced the sky, the orthodox warriors returned to the city, “praising God and our Lady for their success.”[148]

To avenge these atrocities, the Moors now gathered in formidable numbers, not merely from the neighbourhood, but from wherever the fame of their wrongs had penetrated; but they were always repulsed by the valiant count, whose exploits are represented as not much inferior to those of the Cid Ruy Diaz, in Valencia. The very exaggerations, however, prove that Dom Pedro was the most valiant knight of a valiant nation. But during three years no formal siege was laid to the place; a circumstance sufficiently explicable by the perpetual struggles for empire among the Mohammedan princes of western Africa. In 1419 the fortress was first invested, and by an army formidable enough to inspire the assailants with the hope of success. In the combats which ensued, the Christians, notwithstanding the loss of some brave captains, were, as usual, victorious; and “a pleasant thing it was,” says the chronicler,[d] “to see our men, like the waters which flowed on the beach, sprinkled with infidel blood.” After some days the siege was raised, with the loss of some thousands on the part of the Africans. But scarcely had the governor time to congratulate himself on this event, before he received news which filled him with apprehension—that a more formidable army, and a fleet from Granada, were preparing to move against him.

He lost no time in soliciting succour from King João, who as readily granted it. Again was the place invested—this time by sea and land; and, as before, the valour of the besieged was almost superhuman. Fearing, however, that it must ultimately surrender, if not more effectually succoured, the king ordered two of his sons—the infantes Henry and João—to sail with a considerable armament. As they approached the place, they perceived that the Mohammedans had landed, and furiously assailed Dom Pedro, who, with his handful of brave companions, was making terrific carnage among them. This formidable host was totally routed; while the infantes took or dispersed the Moorish vessels, commanded by a prince of the royal house of Granada. This splendid success drew the eyes of all Europe towards this extremity of Africa. That a Christian noble, with so few companions in arms, should not only retain possession of a distant fortress against the frequent attacks of great armies, but should triumph over those armies in the open field, would appear incredible, had not equal wonders been exhibited by the knights of some religious orders. The exploits which have been already recorded were frequently equalled in the sequel by this renowned baron. In the subsequent wars, he was greatly aided by his son, a youth of the same dauntless courage as himself, who made frequent incursions into the Moorish territory, and never failed to return with abundance of spoil.

[1419-1430 A.D.]

During these years, the king was constantly employed in the duties of administration. As he advanced in years, his sense of justice appears to have greatly improved; at least we hear no more of the violent acts which disgraced his early days, and which will forever tarnish his memory.[e]

He re-established his finances by an economy pervading his government and household. He spent little in pomp and splendour; lived frugally, and associated upon an easy footing with the friends of his youth. He was wont to say that conversation was the cheapest of pleasures; and he introduced literary pursuits amongst his courtiers. When he had replenished his exhausted treasury, João made abundant compensation to those whom the inevitable expenses of war had obliged him to offend by revoking the ample donations, with which, upon first receiving the crown, he had recompensed the services that had helped to place it upon his brow. But after satisfying these just claims, João neither lavished his money upon friends and favourites, nor hoarded it in his coffers.

PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR

[1402-1418 A.D.]

A certain employment of João’s wealth ultimately produced far more glory and power, as well as opulence, to his kingdom, than his Mauretanian conquests. His third son, Henry, was the first projector of those remote maritime enterprises and geographical discoveries that opened new channels to the commerce of Europe, poured the riches of the Indies into Portugal, exalted the reputation and consequently the energies of her sons, brought immense realms in Asia and America under her sceptre, and temporarily elevated her to a rank amongst the nations of Europe altogether disproportionate to her natural extent and population.

Prince Henry was grand-master of the order of knights of Christ, instituted by King Diniz, upon the abolition of the Templars, to do battle constantly with the Mohammedans. The grand-master had accompanied his father to the siege of Ceuta, and there highly distinguished himself even beyond his brothers; which circumstance, combining with his strong sense of the duties of his sacred office, inspired him with an irrepressible desire to conquer and convert. But expeditions of the kind he meditated against Mohammedan misbelievers, whether in Spain or Mauretania, could only be undertaken by the authority and under the control of the king, and the infante in consequence turned his thoughts towards the more distant heathen. His studious disposition and especial taste for geography, astronomy, and mathematics also contributed, in all probability, not a little to give his schemes of conquest and conversion that direction. These sciences Dom Henry assiduously cultivated at Sagres, a seaport town he had himself founded near Cape St. Vincent in Algarve, where he drew around him learned men, travellers, and mariners. When he had speculatively satisfied himself of the possibility of sailing round Africa, of which, at that time, little beyond the northern coast was known, and of thus reaching the East Indies, he built and collected vessels in the harbour of Sagres, and sent them forth upon voyages of discovery. The despatch of the first two was determined so suddenly one morning, that it was believed the prince had been favoured with an especial revelation upon the subject during the preceding night, a mark of divine favour of which his great devotion, and the virginal purity of his morals, were judged to render him worthy. Dom Henry fitted out these first expeditions at his own expense; but the king soon entered into his son’s views, and took the principal charge upon himself. Navigation was then still almost in its infancy. The name of Cape Nun had been given to the southernmost African promontory yet known, and terrified the imagination of the ignorant almost as much by its very sound as by the thousand superstitious terrors connected with all beyond it, particularly with the torrid zone, then supposed to be actually uninhabitable from heat. For many years Dom Henry’s mariners advanced only a few leagues past the dreaded cape, and Portugal resounded with murmurs against the waste of men and money occasioned by the infante’s mania for discovery. But Dom Henry persevered, and his father countenanced him. Gradually his captains grew more enterprising, emboldened in some measure by the assistance his astronomical science afforded them. The first, and, during King João’s life, only great fruit of these labours was the rediscovery and settlement of the island of Madeira, about the year 1418. But far from appeasing the popular clamour, this only increased it; the colonising of the island being regarded as a frightful drain upon the population. Nearly about the same time the Canaries were accidentally discovered by an English ship, driven from her course. In 1402 a private adventurer, a Frenchman, named De Bethencourt, with a mixed French and Spanish crew, conquered the savage natives, and took possession of some of these islands, which his heirs afterwards sold to Prince Henry.[h]

Henry the Navigator

(From an old print)

[1418-1437 A.D.]

Of Prince Henry it has been said that, to his “enlightened foresight and perseverance the human race is indebted for the maritime discovery, within one century, of more than half the globe.” His funds were drawn from the large revenues of the order of Christ, and the Moors had told him much of the riches of interior Africa and the Guinea coast. He was the victim of unusual opposition and ridicule, as was Columbus, but, like him, was impervious to both. His personality is strongly to credit for the success of his couriers, for, as his biographer Major[g] has said: “Had that failure and that ridicule produced on Prince Henry the effect which they ordinarily produce on other men, it is impossible to say what delays would have occurred before these mighty events would have been realised; for it must be borne in mind that the ardour, not only of his own sailors, but of surrounding nations, owed its impulse to this pertinacity of purpose in him.” It is to be charged against Prince Henry that he began the slave-trade, which meant so much of shame to the world. It is pleasant to recall that it was he who, forsaking the usual path of exploration, the land, began to seek the wealth of Araby and India by the water-ways and, beginning that fever of adventurous curiosity that opened new worlds south and west, with him began the age of discovery.[a]

By João I the era of Cæsar was abolished in Portugal, and the Christian mode of computation adopted. He died in 1433.

THE REIGN OF DUARTE OR EDWARD (1433-1438 A.D.)

The reign of Duarte [or Edward[149]], though short, was doomed to be more disastrous than that of any preceding monarch. The first great calamity was the plague which raged during the whole of his reign, and which lamentably thinned the population. But a greater was an expedition against Tangier, the preparations for which oppressed his people, and the result of which filled the kingdom with murmurs.

The restless ambition of the king’s brother, Ferdinand, hurried him into this disastrous enterprise. This infante had been too young to share in the glorious conquests of Ceuta: and had not, like Pedro or Henry, obtained celebrity either by travelling or science. But he burned for distinction as much as either and proposed an African expedition. The king seems, however, to have entertained very honourable scruples as to the justice of the warfare in which he was about to engage. He proposed the subject to his theologians and the pope. The chief of the Christian world, with more reason than has dictated some papal decisions, replied that there were only two cases in which war against misbelievers could be lawfully undertaken: (1) when they were in possession of territories which had belonged to Christians, and which the latter sought to recover; (2) when by piracy or war, or any other means, they injured or insulted the true believers. In other cases, proceeded his holiness, hostilities are unjust: the elements, earth, air, fire, and water, were created for all; and to deprive any creature without just cause of those necessary things, was a violation of natural right. There was, however, one point which the pontiff omitted to notice: the obligations contracted by every Catholic sovereign, and still more solemnly by every military order, to advance the glory of God—in other words to convert or to destroy the heathen. This consideration removed the scruples of Duarte, and the expedition was resolved.

[1437 A.D.]

The inexperience which governed the preparations, and the accidental hindrances which impeded their completion, were regarded as melancholy omens by the people. The armament sailed on August 22nd, 1437, and on the 26th arrived before Ceuta, a place which the heroic governor and his no less heroic son had continued to defend with the same success. The two infantes Henry and Ferdinand, who commanded the present expedition, perceived that instead of fourteen thousand men, the number ordered by the king, they had no more than six thousand. They were advised to solicit and wait for a considerable reinforcement, but with their usual impatience they resolved to proceed to Tangier—Henry by land, and Ferdinand by sea, so as to co-operate with each other. The former reached Tangier without accident on the 23rd day of September, and found that his brother had arrived before him. The Portuguese immediately encamped before the place, which was defended by Salat ben Salat, former governor of Ceuta, with seven thousand Moors. But as if every measure of this ill-concerted expedition were doomed to be at once imbecile and unsuccessful, after sustaining a heavy loss the besiegers, finding that their scaling-ladders were too short, were compelled to retreat with shame from the foot of the ramparts. Before others could be procured from Ceuta, the Moors of Fez and Morocco, amounting, we are gravely told, in numbers to ten thousand horse, and eighty thousand infantry, advanced to raise the siege.[150] Instead, however, of being alarmed at this prodigious force, Henry with four thousand of his valiant troops hastened to give them battle; but so great was the dread which this heroic little band had struck into that immense host, that none of the misbelievers daring to wait for the onset, all escaped with precipitation over the neighbouring hills! But as their numbers soon increased by new accessions to 130,000 men,[151] they returned, and this time fought with courage. After a struggle of some hours this vast force yielded to the impetuousity of the infante Ferdinand and fled, leaving some thousands dead on the field! These wondrous fables are not enough. Indignant at their repeated losses of their brethren, the kings of northwestern Africa combined the whole of the respective forces, and marched towards the place. The surprise of Henry was great on seeing the neighbouring hills moving with life; the number of enemies on this occasion, we are veraciously assured, being sixty thousand cavalry, and seven hundred thousand foot![152] On contemplating, however, the dense and widely extended ranks of the Moslems, even he acknowledged that to withstand such a host would be temerity.

He accordingly gave directions for his little army to fall back and to regain the ships. Before this could be effected, the Africans, like tigers of their own deserts, sprang upon them, eager to drink their blood. But what could even a Portuguese do against myriads? His guards were killed by his side, and he was compelled to retreat, fighting, however, at every step, until he reached the entrenchments, where the contest became more bloody and desperate than it had yet been. Some of the defenders now fled,—for the chroniclers reluctantly allow that even a Portuguese may flee,—but the seamen on board the vessels landed, forced the fugitives to return, and the conflict was sustained during some hours with miraculous valour! Towards night it was suspended; and the infante agreed with his remaining captains that at midnight the Christians should silently leave their entrenchments, pass to the beach, and be received on board.

As the invaders were now without provisions and water, this expedient was the only hope of safety which remained to them. But even of this they were soon deprived by the treachery of Martin Vieyra, Henry’s chaplain, who passed over to the misbelievers, and acquainted them with the project. At this very day the Portuguese are seized with indignant wonder at this almost incredible instance of apostasy and treason; and however great their confidence in the powers of the visible head of the church, or even of the glorious Mother, they doubt whether either or both could, even in the event of repentance, procure for such a wretch the commutation of everlasting to purgatorial fire.[153] In consequence of this information, the Moors stationed a formidable guard along the passages to the sea and on the beach. The following morning they advanced to the trenches; the battle was renewed, and, we are told, sustained for eight hours with unshaken firmness, though with greatly diminished numbers. On this occasion no one exhibited more valour than the bishop of Ceuta; who, as he strode from rank to rank to distribute indulgences with one hand, with the other hewed down the misbelievers in a style that called forth the enthusiastic admiration of the faithful. Now he exhibited the consecrated host, and with tears of devotion besought his dear children in Christ to defend the holy Body; while, at the same time, he gave a practical illustration of his meaning, by aiming another deadly blow at some rash son of perdition.[154]

In the end the enemy, unable to force the entrenchments, set them on fire, and on the approach of night retired. The hours which should have been given to rest were occupied in extinguishing the conflagration, a labour not less fatiguing than the conflict of the day. To allay the hunger of his followers, the infante ordered the horses to be killed; but as there was no water, and as everyone raged with a burning thirst, the boon was scarcely acceptable, until heaven sent a copious shower of rain. But however seasonable this relief, it could only be momentary. Famine, or death by the sword, or what was still worse, perpetual captivity, stared the unhappy Christians in the face, when they received a proposal which they could not have expected. They were promised both life and liberty, as the condition of their surrendering the artillery, arms, and baggage, and restoring the fortress of Ceuta. To men in their desperate condition this proposal was too liberal not to be joyfully accepted. For their performance of the covenant the infante Ferdinand offered himself as hostage; and was accompanied by four other knights. The Moors delivered into the hands of Henry a son of Salat ben Salat. The Portuguese, reduced to three thousand, prepared to re-embark. But with characteristic duplicity, the barbarians attempted to prevent the departure of the Christians, who were constrained to fight their way to the ships.

While this once proud armament was slowly returning to Lisbon, Henry, ashamed to appear at court, proceeded to Ceuta, where fatigue of body and anxiety of mind threw him into a serious illness. No sooner did Prince João, who was then in Algarve, hear of the illness of one brother and the captivity of another, than he repaired to Ceuta. The two infantes there agreed that, as the royal consent to the restoration of the fortress could not reasonably be expected, João should propose the exchange of their brother for the son of the African. The proposal was scornfully rejected by the Moors, who threatened, if the place were not immediately restored, to take signal revenge on the person of the infante. João now returned to Portugal to acquaint the king with the melancholy position of affairs. The states were convoked and the subject proposed. Some deputies voted for the restoration of the fortress and the delivery of the infante; but others considered that the recovery of the prince would be too dearly purchased by the surrender of a place which had cost so much, and which might serve as a point of departure for future conquests. It was accordingly resolved that the prince should remain in captivity until the efficacy of money should be proved vain. His sufferings are represented, probably with truth, as at once cruel and humiliating. No sooner was he delivered into the hands of Salat ben Salat, than he began to experience the most savage barbarity. He was, at first, paraded to a dungeon at Tangier, exposed to the insults of assembled thousands, of whom some spit in his face, others covered him with filth; and, on reaching his temporary abode, his food consisted of the vilest aliments, and his bed was the hard ground. From Tangier he was transferred to Arsilla; but two hours before his departure he was placed on a platform, and again subjected to the insults of the populace. All this he bore with unshaken constancy. No ransom would be received by Salat, whose only object was the recovery of his lost seat of government. But when the king of Castile, Juan II, began to remonstrate against the detention of the infante, and even to threaten hostilities unless a ransom were received for him, the Moor, unwilling to incur the responsibility of his charge, delivered it into the hands of his superior, the king of Fez. By that tyrant Ferdinand was consigned to a subterraneous dungeon, excluded alike from air and light. After some months, however, he was drawn from his prison—doubtless, because his persecutors knew that a longer confinement would soon place him beyond their reach—and made to work, like the vilest slave, in the royal stables and gardens. In this situation he heard of Dom Duarte’s death.

A Portuguese Nobleman of the Fifteenth Century

The victim was now subjected to new indignities. Not only was he deprived of all food, except a crust of bread once in twenty-four hours, but he was ironed, put to harder labour, and allowed no apparel beyond a rag, for the modesty of nature. The relation of his sufferings at length moved the pity of his brother Pedro, regent of the kingdom, who, in the name of the royal Alfonso, despatched commissioners to Ceuta, to receive the infante and to remit the keys of that fortress into the hands of the king of Fez. But they soon found that the barbarian had further views; that he insisted on the restoration of the place prior to the delivery of his captive; that his object was to gain possession of their persons, and be thereby enabled to dictate whatever terms he pleased. The negotiations were abruptly ended, and the ill-fated prince transferred to his dungeon, where he languished until 1443, when death put a period to his sufferings. The constancy with which he bore them, his resignation to the divine will, his sweetness of disposition are said to have endeared him to his jailers; and his decease to have called forth the tardy compassion of the royal Moor, who exclaimed that so good a man deserved to know the true faith. His memory accordingly is, as it ought to be, revered in Portugal; but that superstitious nation, not satisfied with the rational sentiment, represents him as a martyr and saint—as one fully entitled to the honours of semi-deification. Miracles[155] are recorded of him with unblushing effrontery.

[1438-1439 A.D.]

The unfortunate issue of the African war, and the complaints of his captive brother, most sensibly affected the heart of Duarte, over whom, had his life been spared, fraternal affection would, doubtless, have triumphed. That he meditated another expedition, and that he commenced preparations on a formidable scale, is honourable to his heart: but his subjects were thinned by the plague; commerce was suspended; the fields remained uncultivated; the public revenues were exhausted, and the people unwilling to make further sacrifices. In 1438 he was seized by the plague at Thomar, whither he had retired to escape its fury, and in a few days he breathed his last. This prince was worthy of a better fate. He had qualities of a high order, he was enlightened, just, and patriotic; and if virtue or talent would have controlled the course of human events, his kingdom would have been happy.

THE REGENCY OF PEDRO

[1439-1446 A.D.]

Alfonso V, the eldest son of Duarte, being only six years of age on his father’s death, the regency devolved, in conformity with the last will of her husband, on the queen-mother, Leonora, a princess of excellent disposition, but not exempted from the fickleness of her sex, and ill qualified to rule a fierce people. To such a people, the sway even of a native woman could scarcely have been agreeable; as a foreigner (a princess of Aragon), she was peculiarly obnoxious. Seeing this general discontent, some of the nobles, with three uncles of the king, resolved to profit by it. Of the three infantes, the hostility of João was the most bitter; of Henry the most disinterested; and of Pedro [duke of Coimbra] the most politic, the most ambitious, and consequently the most to be dreaded.

She offered to Dom Pedro to affiance his daughter Isabella with the young king—an offer which he readily accepted, but which in no manner interrupted his career of ambition. He procured, not only the sanction of the deputies to the proposed marriage, but his recognition as joint regent. At this crisis, Henry proposed in the states assembled at Lisbon that the executive should be divided—that the education of the king and the care of the finances should rest with the queen, that the administration of justice should be intrusted to the count of Barcelos, and that Pedro should be nominated protector of the kingdom. At first, Leonora opposed this extraordinary expedient to satisfy the ambition of the princes; but, finding that the populace were arming in great multitudes to espouse the cause of their favourite, she was terrified into submission.

To bring the great question to issue, the mob, the only authority then subsisting, assembled in the church of St. Dominic, and swore that, until Alfonso reached his majority, the government should rest in Dom Pedro; that if Pedro died he should be succeeded in the office by his brother Henry, and the latter by the infante João, and that thenceforward no woman should be allowed to rule the Portuguese. Under the pretext that the education of the young king, if left to her, must necessarily be effeminate, and unfit him for his station, he was removed by a sudden decree of the same cortes, from her care, and placed under that of the regent.

The wisdom of Dom Pedro’s administration daily reconciled to it some of his former enemies: he restored tranquillity, encouraged the national industry, was indefatigable in his labours, and impartial in his judgments. Grateful for the benefits he procured them, the people of Lisbon would have erected a statue in his honour, had he not rigorously forbidden them. He was too well acquainted with both history and human nature not to know that popular favour is fleeting as the wind. He observed that, if such a statue were erected, it would be one day disfigured by the very hands which had made it. We are assured, indeed, by a contemporary chronicler, Ruy de Pina,[i] that he had some anticipation of the melancholy fate which awaited him. Yielding to the representations of her pretended friends, Leonora openly erected the standard of rebellion, and a civil war commenced: its horrors were increased by a body of Castilians, who, at the instance of Leonora, penetrated into the kingdom, and committed many ravages. In 1445, she formally requested permission to return, to end her days with her children; and her wish would doubtless have been gratified, had not death surprised her at Toledo.[156]

In 1446, King Alfonso reached his fourteenth year—the period of his majority. His first acts were regarded by the people as favourable omens of his future administration, and, above all, of his disposition to cultivate a good understanding with the regent. When, in the cortes convoked for the occasion at Lisbon, Pedro resigned the delegated authority into his hands, he desired the latter to retain it till he was better able to bear the load; and he soon afterwards married Isabella, to whom he had been affianced in his tenth year. But these buds of hope were soon blighted. The regent was powerful; he therefore had enemies—and enemies the more bitter, that there was now a master who could destroy him with ease. Of these none were more vindictive or base than his natural brother, the count de Barcelos, on whom he had just conferred the lordship of Braganza, with the title of duke. No sooner did the duke of Braganza perceive the secure place which he held in the king’s affections, than he began to inveigh against the character and actions of Pedro. These discourses, and the mention of his mother’s wrongs, which were artfully distorted, made a deep impression on the king, who at length regarded his father-in-law with abhorrence. The regent perceived the change, and he requested permission to retire to Coimbra, of which he was duke. His request was granted; and so also was another—an act, under the royal signature and seal, approving the whole of his administration.

No sooner had he departed than a hundred reptiles darted their stings. Among the new charges brought against him was one of poisoning the late king and queen. In vain did the sage Henry hasten from his aërial residence above Cape St. Vincent, to vindicate the character of his brother; in vain did Dom Alfonso de Alamado, a nobleman of unsullied honour, join in the chivalrous act—for chivalrous it was, when the lives of both were threatened as their reward, if they did not immediately retire from the court;[157] in vain did the latter challenge all who dared to dispute Dom Pedro’s virtues to a mortal combat; in vain did the royal Isabella plead her father’s innocence. Alfonso published an edict debarring all his subjects from communication with the prince, and ordering him to remain on his estates. His arms were next demanded: these he refused to surrender. The duke of Braganza now assembled his troops, and marched towards Coimbra; he was met at Penella by Dom Pedro, before whose handful of friends he fled with ignominy. Again did his daughter affectionately labour to avert his fate. In an agony of tears she cast herself at her husband’s feet, and besought his pardon. Alfonso was affected: he raised his queen, whom he tenderly loved, and promised that if her father would acknowledge his crime, it should be forgiven. More jealous of his honour than fond of life, the high-spirited prince would acknowledge no crime, simply because he had none to acknowledge. The incensed monarch tore the reply into pieces, and said, “Your father wishes his destruction; he shall have his wish!”

[1446-1455 A.D.]

The duke left Coimbra with one thousand horse and five thousand foot, all resolved to perish rather than permit a beloved leader to be oppressed; and on their banners were engraven, “Fidelity! Justice! Vengeance!” The king hastened to meet him with about thirty thousand veteran troops; they approached each other on the banks of the Alfarrobeira (May 21st, 1449), above which was an eminence where Pedro entrenched himself. The prince, who desperately sought the most dangerous post, and who evidently resolved to sacrifice his life, fell through a wound in the throat. The carnage which followed was terrific: the troops of the fallen infante, intent on revenging his death and resolved on their own, would neither give nor receive quarter; almost all fell on the field. The vengeance of Alfonso passed beyond the grave: he ordered the corpse of Pedro to remain on the ground, to be forever deprived of the last rites of humanity; but in a few days some compassionate peasants, whose souls might have put to shame the boasted chivalry of nobles, privately removed it, and interred it in the church of Alverca. The descendants of all his adherents to the fourth generation were declared infamous—incapable of holding any public charge. The mob of Lisbon testified characteristic joy at his catastrophe—a remarkable confirmation of his prudence in forbidding them to erect the projected statue of him.

The death of this prince—the greatest whom Portugal had lately seen—caused a deep sensation throughout Europe, and from Rome to Britain drew forth nothing but execrations against his murderers. Through the indignant remonstrances of the pope and of his brother-in-law, the duke of Burgundy; through the increasing influence of his daughter, whose virtues were appreciated by her husband, and whose efforts to honour his memory were at length successful; and more still through the king’s conviction of his innocence, in the fifth year from this tragedy his bones were removed from their humble sepulchre, and were transferred with great pomp to the mausoleum of the Portuguese kings. In 1455, the queen suddenly sickened and died. That her death was the effect of poison administered by her enemies, and the enemies of her father—among whom were doubtless the detestable princes of Braganza—is the unshaken opinion of her own times and of posterity.

[1455-1475 A.D.]

The disastrous captivity of the infante Ferdinand had sunk deep into the heart of Alfonso, as into that of most princes of his family; and the desire of revenge had been suspended, not abandoned. The reduction of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had filled Christian Europe with consternation, and had led to the formation of a general league, the object of which was to drive back the misbelievers into their Asiatic wilds. Alfonso’s original intention was to reduce the fortress of Tangier, the siege of which had proved so unfortunate to the princes Henry and Ferdinand; but the advice of a Portuguese noble determined him to invest Alcacer-Seguier [or es-Seghir]. In September, 1457, the armament, consisting of above two hundred vessels, and carrying twenty thousand men, sailed from the three ports, effected a junction at sea, and steered towards the Moorish coast.

The success which had attended the attack on Alcacer-Seguier animated Alfonso to renew the attempt on Tangier. Accordingly, in 1464, he sailed with another armament. The assault was repulsed with deplorable loss; the flower of the Portuguese chivalry either perished on the spot, or were compelled to surrender. The king himself had considerable difficulty in effecting his escape. For some years the result of this inglorious expedition seems to have inspired him with too much dread to renew the attempt; but, in 1471, he embarked thirty thousand men on board 308 transports, and proceeded to invest Arsilla, a fortress on the Atlantic. The king himself, and his son the infante João, were among the foremost in the assault. The Portuguese massacred all—as well those who resisted as those who threw down their arms in token of submission—with diabolical fury. In this work of destruction João was behind none of his countrymen. Terrified by the fate of Arsilla, the inhabitants of Tangier abandoned the city with all their movable substance. It was immediately occupied by the Christians, and it was formed into an episcopal see. From these successes, the Portuguese courtiers surnamed their king Africanus—an epithet which, with any other people, would have been considered a bitter satire. Throughout his operations in Africa he had shown great incapacity, and had met with unparalleled reverses; nor were the successes recently obtained in any way attributable to his valour or abilities, but to those of his generals and his son. The latter, who had attained his sixteenth year, was knighted on this occasion.[e]

ALFONSO V AND LA BELTRANEJA

We have now reached a shameful page in the history of Portugal. A vision passed through the brain of Alfonso V of uniting beneath his sceptre the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile. He thought to realise his dream by marrying his niece Doña Juana, daughter of his sister Doña Juana and of King Henry IV of Castile, who would succeed to that throne upon the death of her father. But Alfonso V was too faint-hearted and too unskilful a politician for so great an ambition, which had already turned the weak head of his predecessor Ferdinand I.

[1475-1479 A.D.]

On the death of Henry IV of Castile his daughter Doña Juana inherited the throne, she having been recognised and sworn queen of Castile even during her father’s life. Nevertheless Ferdinand, king of Aragon, who was married to Isabella of Castile, disputed her claim. It was then that Alfonso V sought to unite upon his own head the crown of Portugal and Castile by marrying his niece, the queen Doña Juana. The marriage took place by proxy at Palencia, in May, 1475. The pope, Paul II, was prevailed upon to grant the dispensation of consanguinity, but it was immediately revoked by his successor, Sixtus IV.

How different was the character of Alfonso V from that of some of his predecessors! How weak was his policy! The grandson of João I never even completed his marriage, in spite of his ambition to be king of Portugal and Castile, Doña Juana having been recognised and sworn queen of Castile even during her father’s life. What a difference between Alfonso V and his predecessor Alfonso III, who mocked at Rome and the pontiff, married one wife, with another living, raised one queen and deposed another, in spite of the excommunications of the Vatican, creating a strong faction in Portugal and getting himself proclaimed king; politically availing himself of every element in and out of the country to accomplish his ends, and only repenting on his death-bed, when he had won everything. It might be said that the cold British blood of his grandmother Philippa of Lancaster was still dominant in Alfonso V who, according to certain chronicles, observed complete chastity after the death of his wife, Queen Isabella.

A Portuguese Woman of the Fifteenth Century

In the meantime intrigues were active in Spain; one argument, on which great stress was laid against the claims of Alfonso V, was that Juana was the child of adultery, for the faction of Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon never wearied of repeating that she was not the daughter of Henry IV of Castile, but of Beltran de la Cuenca [whence she was called the Beltraneja], making great sport of the dissolute morals of Juana, the sister of the king of Portugal, and mother of his bride. In the end the two factions came to blows. The fortune of war went against the Portuguese, who were defeated at the battle of Toro in 1476, in spite of the prodigies of valour performed in this battle by the infante Dom João, heir to the throne.

[1479-1483 A.D.]

Defeated in battle, Alfonso V attempted to gain his end by policy, for which he had not the necessary dexterity. He bethought himself of attempting to persuade Louis XI, king of France, to take his part and give him the help and protection of his troops to place the crowns of Portugal and Castile upon his head. The king of France remained unmoved, although the king of Portugal went in person to solicit his help. In disgust Alfonso V announced his intention of visiting Palestine, and declared to his son, Prince João, whom he had appointed regent during his absence from Spain, that in such a case he should be proclaimed king. But he returned unexpectedly in 1477, and on the 14th of September, 1479, signed the peace with Castile at Alcantara—a shameful treaty, by which the king of Portugal abandoned his wife, who was forced to become a nun and exchange the crown for the veil. She entered the convent of St. Clair in Santarem in 1479, afterwards passing to the convent of St. Clair of Coimbra, where she was professed on the 17th of November, 1480. In the meanwhile the negotiations were so prolonged that the prince Dom João lost patience, and with his impulsive disposition took upon himself to send the Castilian ambassadors two documents, one declaring for peace and the other for war, bidding them choose without further parley. Upon this final resolution, the Castilians concluded the negotiations. Greater energy on the part of Alfonso V might perhaps, even at the end of the dispute, have obtained less shameful and degrading conditions of peace. Alfonso V, crushed and reduced to the last extremity of consternation, was resolved to convoke the cortes and abdicate in favour of his son, when he fell sick of the plague at Cintra, and died in the very room of the palace in which he was born, on the 28th of August, 1481.[k]

With the exception of the accidental success in Africa, his reign was almost uniformly disastrous—a misfortune more owing to the deplorable weakness of his character than to any other cause. He founded the order of the Tower and Sword, under the invocation of Santiago, and was a great patron of literature; he was the first of the Portuguese kings to collect a library, and to order the national history to be treated by competent writers. His reign is, however, somewhat redeemed by the discoveries of the infante Henry, who, from his residence at Tagus, continued to fix his eyes intently on the maritime regions of western Africa. Through this enlightened prince, the Azores, with the Madeiras, the Canaries, Cape de Verd, and other islands west of that great continent were discovered or colonised. The discovery of the Cape de Verd, the last which illustrated the life of Henry, was owing to the enterprise of a Genoese, Antonio Nolle, who had derived a confused knowledge of their existence from the ancient geographers, and who, from some dissatisfaction with his own country, offered his services to the prince. Having coasted from Morocco to Cape de Verd, he deviated westwards and soon fell in with the islands, which he called after the cape of that name.[e]

REIGN OF JOÃO II “THE PERFECT”

[1481-1495 A.D.]

Dom João II was now proclaimed king. His accession to the throne was the signal for a despotic war against the aristocracy and the territorial influence of magnates. João began by convoking the cortes at Evora in 1481. A law was then published introducing a new oath to be taken by all the chief alcaides and holders of grants. The restrictions placed upon the criminal jurisdiction of the nobility, the examination of grants, and the diminution of the political influence of the nobles, produced great discontent among the aristocracy, which gave rise to intrigues, plots, and conspiracies, which João II, following the example of Louis XI of France, repressed with all severity, not sparing blood nor executions even of his own kindred. Under these circumstances João II seized the opportunity of satisfying his vengeance and giving vent to the hatred which he had nourished for many years against the duke of Braganza, Dom Ferdinand, his second cousin, who was married to his wife’s sister. He had him publicly beheaded at Evora on the 22nd of June, 1483; he is now judged to have been innocent of the crime of high treason imputed to him.

In the following year, João II with his own hands plunged a dagger into the breast of the duke of Viseu, his cousin and brother-in-law, in the palace of Setubal, for having conspired against him. After his death the duke was judged and condemned (a ludicrous determination of the despotic monarch) and his accomplices executed. The bishop of Evora, who was accused of being concerned in the conspiracy, was ordered to be thrown into a well; and more than eighty nobles and fidalgoes paid with their lives for the opposition which they made or were accused of making to the king’s policy. It was the second time that the assassin’s dagger had been publicly used in Portugal in the royal palace, by a prince upon whose brow the crown of the kingdom was to rest. Both the royal assassins were excellent kings, who governed the country diligently with courage and wisdom, raised it and gave it prosperity. In the case of the blow struck by João II, it is to be noted that it was dealt to a subject whom the king might easily have committed to a proper trial, with the certainty of finding judges who would condemn those guilty of high treason. To lessen the awful impression which these extraordinary assassinations make upon the mind and the stain which they leave upon the memory of these monarchs, it is necessary to consider the political circumstances and the ideas and customs of those times. Things inadmissible to our present civilisation were not so to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—above all when the deed was that of an absolute king who had to render an account to God alone.

There is no doubt that the wealth and therefore the influence successively acquired by the nobility had reached such a pitch that they absorbed the best revenues of the land, vexing the people by the insolence, cupidity, and abuses which oppressed the vassals of the great lords and proprietors, though Portugal happily never suffered the terrors of feudalism. This excessive power of the nobles dated from the time of João I, who was forced to create a new aristocracy to enable him to combat the king of Castile, most of the old nobility having joined the Castilian banners, and to liberally divide the property of the crown with those who were faithful to his cause. The king afterwards endeavoured to obviate the inconvenience of these excessive grants by the “mental law” (lei mental), which, without revoking the grants already made to the possessions thereof and their lawful descendants, put great restrictions upon the alienation of such property. The mental law, published only in the reign of Dom Duarte, did not have the desired result; the infante Dom Pedro, during his troubled regency, was forced to make concessions which decreased the patrimony of the crown.

But the reign of Alfonso V was above all disastrous upon this point, as we have said; it was the best time for the nobles and holders of grants. To remunerate the nobles who fought at his side, the luckless pretender to the throne of Castile considered nothing too much—titles, favours, grants, salaries, pensions, allowances, marriage dowries, education of the children of nobles, gratifications for ordinary and extraordinary services, real or pretended; everything was conceded with liberality and profusion by the monarch who was called the African, but might more properly have been called the Prodigal.[158]

The internal political situation as well as the state of the treasury called for an effectual remedy, and it is certain that only an energetic, inflexible, and dauntless character such as that of João II could have applied by sheer force a prompt though violent remedy. It may therefore be said that the king, who was called “the perfect prince,” rendered a memorable service to the country by the tremendous blow which he struck at the aristocracy and territorial power, restoring freedom of action to the crown, and liberating the public exchequer from the heavy charges and expenses placed upon it by the nobility. It is not surprising that in this struggle between the crown and the nobility the middle classes and the people should be found on the side of the king, since he made the offences, sufferings, oppression, complaints, and petitions represented by the deputies of the councils in the cortes of 1481 his chief pretext and principal weapon in declaring mortal war against the aristocracy and allying himself with the people.

Thus there was a firm alliance between the king and the people, although João II convoked the cortes only three times during his reign, and the crown and councils were generally on the best of terms. On the 12th of July, 1491, the prince Dom Alfonso went hunting in Almeirim, and as he was galloping at nightfall the horse took fright at some object which lay across the path, and fell, dragging the prince with him. He was picked up speechless and unconscious, and carried to a fisherman’s hut where he died a few hours later in the arms of his father, mother, and wife.

This untimely death was a great affliction to the king and queen of Portugal, especially to João II, who thereby lost his hope of an heir to his throne; for by the death of Prince Alfonso the right of succession fell upon Dom Emmanuel, duke of Beja, the brother of Queen Leonora and of the duke of Viseu whom he had stabbed at Setubal. The thought that the crown of Portugal would pass to his wife’s family oppressed and tormented João II. The probability that his brother-in-law Dom Emmanuel (Manoel), the duke of Beja, whom he hated, would be king of Portugal, put his cousin the king beside himself. In this affliction João II thought of having his natural son Jorge [or George] acknowledged as his successor. Jorge was master of the orders of Santiago and Aviz, and duke of Coimbra. But Dom João did not carry out his intention; he remembered the precedent of João I, but the clear judgment of his wife, Donna Leonora, pointed out to him that the circumstances were very different; on the one hand there was no fear of foreign invasion as in the days of the master of Aviz, while on the other hand the king had left wounds still unhealed from his war against the aristocracy. Upon the death of João II, 1495, Dom Jorge had not sufficient partisans to secure to him the crown which his father so earnestly longed to bequeath him.[k]

Character of João II

João was a great prince—comprehensive in his views, vigorous in the execution of his designs, as he was cautious and politic in their formation; zealous for justice, and for the happiness of his people. That zeal, however, sometimes degenerated into vengeance, and was sometimes disarmed by capricious clemency. But his character will be better conceived from a few striking traits or sayings (and many such are recorded of him) than from any description.

He placed little value on the recommendations of his nobles; and a favour solicited through their medium was almost sure to be denied. But he was fond of honouring and rewarding merit, especially when, as is generally the case, that merit was dumb.[159] To a faithful and valiant knight he one day observed: “You have hands to serve me; have you no tongue to request a recompense?” Being at dinner, he was once served among others by Dom Pedro de Melo, a knight of great prowess, who was better fitted for handling the sword than a dish in the palace of princes, and let fall a large vessel of water, which sprinkled some of the courtiers, and made others laugh. “Why do you laugh?” inquired the king; “Dom Pedro has dropped a vessel of water, but he never dropped his lance!” He had borrowed money of a rich merchant at Tavira, to whom, at the expiration of the stipulated period, he returned it with legal interest. The merchant—a wonderful instance of disinterestedness in such a capacity—refused to receive more than the principal; João sent double interest, with the order to continue doubling it as often as the merchant should persist in the refusal. In one of his public edicts, with the view of recruiting his cavalry, he ordered all his subjects to be in readiness to furnish excellent war-horses. The churchmen pleaded their immunities, and some of them went so far as to say that they were not his subjects but those of the pope. To punish them in the way they deserved, João loudly asserted that he had never regarded them as subjects; and by another ordinance he forbade all smiths and farriers to shoe their mules and horses—a measure which soon compelled them to submit. The monopolists in corn had created an artificial famine by purchasing and piling in their warehouses all the grain in the kingdom, which they refused to sell under an exorbitant price. By a royal ordinance the people were forbidden to purchase from these dealers, and the Castilians were permitted to import in whatever quantities they pleased; the kingdom soon teemed with abundance, and the monopolists were ruined. He was a great enemy to detraction. One praised a recent feat of arms of a Portuguese governor in Africa: another attempted to detract from it by saying that the success was merely owing to chance. “That may be,” observed the king: “but how is it that such chance never happens to anyone else?” Nor was he less jealous of his dignity with foreign princes than with his own subjects. A Portuguese vessel had been captured by some French pirates: he ordered all the French vessels in his ports to be seized. The owners complained to their king, Charles VIII, who immediately punished the pirates, and caused their prize to be restored. It was found, however, that a parrot had not been restored with the rest, and he insisted that every vessel should be retained until the bird were produced. In short, the success of his administration was unrivalled; he introduced industry and comfort among his people; added largely to the national resources; and was in many respects the greatest monarch that ever swayed the sceptre of Portugal.

A Portuguese Captain of the Fifteenth Century

In the reign of this prince, the Portuguese spirit of maritime enterprise was carried to a high pitch—a spirit which, except in one instance,[160] he was always anxious to foster. His first care was to found a fort on the coast of Guinea, which had been discovered during the preceding reign, for the purpose of maintaining a permanent commercial intercourse with the natives. The barbarian king, who had entered into an alliance with the strangers, consented to the erection of the fortress. From this moment Portugal, or rather her monarchs, derived a great revenue in ivory and gold from this unknown coast; so great, indeed, that he feared lest the vessels of other European nations should be attracted to it. To damp their avidity, he took care that the voyage should be represented not merely as difficult, but as in the highest degree dangerous; and as impossible to be undertaken in regular ships; in any other than the flat-bottomed round smacks at that time peculiar to Portugal. The secret, however, was near coming to the knowledge of the vigilant monarch of Castile, who suspected the truth, and who longed to obtain a settlement on the same coast. In the hope of a princely reward, a Portuguese captain and two pilots proceeded to Castile. They were pursued into the neighbouring territory by the agents of João; and, as they refused to obey the summons of recall, two were killed on the spot, and the third brought back to Evora, where he was quartered. The severity of this punishment sank deep into the minds of the other pilots, and retained them in the service of their own sovereign. And when João heard that vessels were constructing in the English ports, unknown to Edward IV, and at the cost of the duke de Medina Sidonia, for an expedition to Ethiopia,—so the Portuguese termed all central Africa from the Nile to the western coast,—he sent an embassy to the English monarch, whom he reminded of the ancient alliance between the two crowns, and whom he easily induced to prohibit the preparations. In a short time, the fortress of São Jorge da Mina (Elmina) became a considerable city, and afterwards infamous from the traffic in slaves.

But this was only the beginning of Portuguese enterprise. The king had been taught to suspect that by coasting the African continent a passage to the East Indies might be discovered; and he not only equipped two small squadrons expressly for this object, but despatched two of his subjects (Pedro de Covilhão and Alfonso de Payva) into India and Abyssinia, to discover the route to and between these vast regions, and what advantages Portuguese commerce might derive from the knowledge thus acquired.

PROGRESS IN DISCOVERY

[1487-1497 A.D.]

The discoveries of Covilhão encouraged João to attempt the passage to India. One of the squadrons—that under João Alfonso de Aveiro—discovered the kingdom of Benin. The other, under Cam, was more fortunate. Crossing the equinox, he arrived at the mouth of the Congo. He coasted two hundred leagues further to the south; but finding no cape, he returned to Congo, and was honourably received by the barbarian king, whom he disposed to Christianity, and impressed with a favourable idea of European civilisation. His departure affected the half convert, who besought him to return with missionaries, and who at the same time permitted several natives to accompany him, for the purpose of being thoroughly instructed in the new faith. By the Portuguese king and court they were received with great joy, and at their express desire were soon regenerated in the waters of baptism, he, his queen, and many of the nobles standing sponsors at the font. After a residence of two years in Europe, they returned to Congo, accompanied by several monks, some mechanics and agricultural labourers, and an embassy, headed by Ruy de Sousa. Hundreds repaired to the missionaries for instruction; the idols were broken or removed; a church was built, and mass celebrated with imposing pomp. But to renounce worldly pleasures, and to mortify the strongest passions, to forego the privilege of many wives, and the gratification of revenge—were too much for these licentious barbarians. By degrees the new faith changed, and was finally extinguished.

Though no paramount advantage was derived from the alliance with Congo, the discoveries of Cam led to a solid one—that of the Cape of Good Hope. This memorable discovery was made in 1487, by Bartholomeu Dias, an officer of equal enterprise and experience. The high winds and still higher seas which assailed this vast promontory induced the captain to call it the Cape of Storms; but João, who had more extended views, called it O Cabo da Boa Esperança, or the Cape of Good Hope. On this occasion Dias ventured little beyond the promontory; nor was it passed by any vessel until the following reign, when the famous Vasco da Gama doubled it on his voyage to India.[e]

Martius’ Account of Vasco and Cabral

[1497 A.D.]

To Covilhão belongs the honour of marking the itinerary of the voyage to India, asserting that the East might be reached by the south of Africa. In the letters which he sent from Cairo, he said that ships navigating along the coast of Guinea would ultimately reach the extreme south of the African continent; and from thence steering east in the direction of the island of Lua, by Sofala, would find themselves on the way to India. From this and other information received, was composed the plan of the daring expedition of 1497, the destined course of which was first Kalikodu or Calecut (Calicut), as it was called then, and from thence to where Covilhão was. Vasco da Gama was chosen by Dom Emmanuel (Dom João II had then been dead three years) to command the expedition. He was a daring but prudent man, uniting the qualities of a soldier and sailor, a thing common at that time and even later. The same thing applies to Alfonso de Albuquerque, Dom João de Castro, and many others. Such a combination had a decided advantage; the separation of these qualities did not come to embarrass their plans; there was unity in the command, for the captain was likewise pilot.

The greatest judgment and prudence directed the preparations for the expedition. The information sent by Covilhão was weighed and considered and compared with that previously obtained. Charts and maps were examined, and Bartholomeu Dias himself related what had befallen him, the obstacles which he had encountered, and the difficulties which must be overcome. With his vast experience he directed the building of the ships, doing away with exaggerated dimensions, and insisting on the strength of the ribs. The discoverer of the cape was to accompany the expedition as far as São Jorge da Mina, and remain there to carry on the gold trade. There were four small ships, that they might be able to enter all the ports, explore every creek, pass over shoals, and cruise along the coast. Their construction was strong and perfect, such as had never been seen before.

They carried six freestone columns carved with the Portuguese arms, and the armillary sphere which the king had adopted as his emblem. One was to be set up at the bay of St. Braz, another at the mouth of the Zambesi, another in Mozambique, another in Calicut, and another in the island of Santa Maria. There were two chaplains on board each ship; negro, Kaffir, and Arab interpreters, ten convicts for any sacrifice that might be necessary, and finally 148 soldiers. The best pilots had been chosen and the king would allow nothing to be spared. He came in person to view the ships on the stocks, and remained conversing with the masters, listening to the observations of Bartholomeu and Pedro Dias, and Vasco da Gama, who showed him the new astrolabe of Behaim, a rough triangle of wood but very effectual.

The three ships bore the names of the three archangels: S. Gabriel the capitanea of 120 tons; S. Miguel (formerly Berrio), and S. Raphael of 100 tons. The name of the fourth, of 200 tons, is unknown. At the end of June they were all finished and ready, and rode at anchor before the church of Restello, where the captains watched all the night of the 7th of July. The next day, after mass, accompanied by the king and all the people of the city, singing, with tapers in their hands, they all went in procession to the shore and there embarked. Camoens says that at that moment:

But now an aged sire of reverend mien,

Upon the foreshore thronged by the crowds,

With lore by long experience only grown,

Thus from his time-taught breast he made his moan:

“O curst the mortal who the first was found,

Teaching the tree to wear the flowing sheet.”

—The Lusiads, Burton’s translation.

Indeed many in their hearts strongly condemned the persistency of the monarchs in sacrificing men and money to this chimera of navigation. The cold and tardy prudence born of past experience did not believe success possible after so many vain attempts. The result was to prove the contrary; but the words of the poet prophesied the fatal consequences of an empire which all, both daring and prudent, were ready to acclaim upon the return of Vasco da Gama. Camoens, watching the decline of the sun, could relate the hunger endured at sea, the tempests, shipwrecks, and wanderings in the burning lands of the terrible Adamastor, and the trail of white skeletons left across the sands of both Africas—a rosary of mournful tragedies. He could relate how waves of tyranny and crime from that Indian sea stretched out to Europe to overwhelm Portugal with their slime.

They were three months reaching St. Helena Bay (Nov. 7th). They landed to take the sun with their astrolabe, the rolling of the ship preventing them from doing so on board; here they had several skirmishes with the natives, and set out again at last upon the 16th of November. On the 19th they came in sight of Cape Tormentoso, or of Good Hope, both names being fully justified on this occasion. For three days they were beaten about by tempests. The wind and waves were such that the upper parts of the ships were under water, and it could scarcely be seen if they advanced upon the waves or were wrapped around by them. Upon the stern castles the ships had painted pictures of the saints whose name they bore, and when the raging sea flung the pictures on to the tilt the crews grew pale with horror. It was a bad omen, for it seemed as if they were deserted by the divine favour. Fierce and angry seas washed over the poops, dashing the boats against the sides of the ships and damaging the helms. They furled the sails, cut down the tilt, and began to throw the cargo overboard. At last the weather cleared.

Having doubled the cape, they entered the bay of St. Braz, where the calms detained them until the 7th of the following month. Navigating for a week along the southern coast of Africa, on the 15th they reached the Chaos Islands, the farthest point reached by Bartholomeu Dias. Then they began to follow the instructions of Covilhão, the pilot absent in the lands of the mythical Prester John, of whom they were in search. They wished to proceed along the coast, but the currents, which were a great danger, carried them towards the vast and unknown southern sea. The sailors rebelled in vain; Vasco da Gama, like an inexorable destiny prudent in his audacity, overcame the currents and revolts.

[1497-1498 A.D.]

At last they got out of the “sea of darkness” (mar tenebroso), and then only could the terrific cape be looked upon as overcome. The tempests and the currents grew still. By day there was calm with the sky of purest blue; by night, several times the light of S. Pedro Gonçalves, the St. Elmo of Lisbon, shone above the tops of the masts. All promised fair weather. They climbed the masts to see the marks of the miracle, and brought back with great devotion the droppings of green wax left by the saint.

On January 10th, 1498, they touched land at Inhambane, and had some intercourse with the Kaffirs; on the 22nd they had reached Quilimane (Kilimane), where “noblemen” came on board to visit them, with turbans of worked silk upon their heads.

India was reached for the first time. They saw men of divers nations, and traces of that distant civilisation so eagerly sought for. They had emerged from the African sea, and from the heavy shadow of the dark continent. Yet these “noblemen” whom they gazed upon almost with love, regarding them as brothers, were to be their cruelest enemies. They reached Mozambique on the 2nd of March. Around the fleet at anchor came the native vessels, without decks or sails. The Moors came to trade with them. The sultan in person wished to compliment Vasco da Gama, who received him on board. The sultan proved perfidious, and the fleet, without the pilots, cruised along the coast to Mombasa (on the 8th of April), where chance alone saved it from the plot which the Moors had prepared against it; they had already recognised dangerous competitors in these men who had come over the sea to these regions, which had until then been the undisputed possession of Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia. Saved by a miracle, Vasco da Gama went on to Melinde (15th), where the sultan received him well; but not trusting these “noblemen” of Zanzibar, he availed himself of a Moor who had remained on board at Mozambique, and who chanced to know the way to Calicut. They put to sea, and in twenty-seven days (24th of April to the 19th of May), they were in India. The voyage had lasted ten months and eleven days.

It was now that their wonder reached its limit. Everything they had seen as yet gave not a distant idea of what they now saw upon their landing. The natural pomp and splendour of the East filled them with surprise and cupidity. In their religious ignorance they saw everywhere the Christians of Prester John. The natives adored the Virgin Mary, and the Portuguese also prostrated themselves before our Lady, in the person of Gauri, the white goddess, Sakti of Siva, the destroyer. This confusion, increased by the fact of not understanding each other’s speech, occasioned scenes ingenuously comical. Some who were doubtful, remarked that if the idols were devils their prayer was intended for God alone, quieting their consciences by this mental reservation. To increase their amazement, there came to them a Moor who spoke in Portuguese, “Good luck! good luck! Many rubies, many emeralds!”

From Lisbon to India was but a short distance, for the feelings have no measure. They were all Christians, they also had kings. The world was all one and man the same everywhere. The ingenuous way in which the greatest things were accomplished is the greatest proof of the heroic strength of these men of the Renaissance.

[1498-1500 A.D.]

At that time India—and by that name we designate all the coasts and islands included between the meridians of Suez and Tidore, and between 20° south latitude and 30° north latitude, the scene of the Portuguese campaigns—in India, we say, foreign races held a kind of dominion resembling in all things that which afterwards belonged to the Portuguese—a commercial-maritime monopoly, and consequently, factories, colonies, and states. The races they were about to dispossess of this dominion were the Arabs, the Ethiopians, Persians, Turks, and Afghans, who, coming down from the Red and the Arabian seas, and confounded in the religious wave of Islam, had subjugated the peninsula from the Indus to the Ganges, and eastern Africa from Adal to Monomotapa. Extending themselves to the extreme east, they reached as far as Cambodia and Tidore in the Moluccas, across Arakan and Pegu, from the peninsula of Malacca (Malay peninsula), and from Burma and Shan (Siam) into the continent, through Sumatra and Borneo and the middle of the Sunda archipelago. The Portuguese called all the natives Moors, a generic term already in use in Europe to denote the followers of Islam, and therefore now adopted when, having come from afar and traversed so many seas, they again found themselves face to face with the Turk, the opponent of the Christian throughout the world.

“The devil take you! What brought you here!” was the compliment addressed to the Portuguese by a Moor in Calicut; and in Mozambique and Mombasa the Moors (we will henceforward use this word as a generic term, as aforesaid) persuaded or forced Samundri Rajah (Zamorin) king or count (India was under a pseudo-feudal rule) of Calicut, to exterminate the Portuguese. Calicut was the commercial empire of the coast of Malabar, and the dominions of the rajah formed the so-called kingdom of Kanara.

It was an easy matter no doubt to persuade the ruler that Vasco da Gama was a pirate and his king a myth; certainly the Moors of Calicut defined, in advance and unawares, the Portuguese dominion, which differed from common piracy only in that it was rapine organised by a political state. Convinced or constrained, the rajah ordered the navigators to be pursued, but they embarked and defended themselves, August 30th. After remaining some months in the island of Anjediva, upon the coast, Vasco da Gama resolved to return and set sail for Portugal on the 10th of July, 1498. A year later on the same date he reached Lisbon. Great was the enthusiasm. Dom Emmanuel also had his Indies, and Portugal her Columbus. But what tidings of Prester John? And what of Covilhão? None. The navigator had succeeded in overcoming the cape and discovering India, but he had not succeeded in solving the enigma which at that time had baffled their search for three centuries. This was of small account in history. The essential point was the solving of a greater enigma—that of the “dark ocean.” Little was now wanting; in twenty years there would not remain an unknown corner of land in the whole circumference of the globe, nor a span unexplored in the vast expanse of seas. “Under the wild waves to learn the secrets of the earth, and the mysteries and illusions of the sea,” the Portuguese with heroic curiosity took in their hands the future of Europe and of the world. In the year after the discovery of India, Pedro Alvares Cabral, who was sent thither with an imposing fleet, could not resist the temptation of curiosity. Steering east in the Atlantic a question constantly tormented him—what lay to the west? In that direction Columbus had discovered the Indies in the northern hemisphere; were there not perhaps Indies in the southern hemisphere also? He steered west to explore—what were a few months more or less in the long journey to the east? Thus he discovered Brazil; the western land lay from the extreme north to the extreme south, extending through the two hemispheres. Not till then could it be said that America was completely discovered (1500).

The news of the discovery of new lands made little impression in Lisbon; the fervent desire of the court was the discovery of the Prester, the enchanted Prester John, in order to make a good alliance with him and bring to Portugal a little at least of those good things which Vasco da Gama had seen with his own eyes, the report of which inflamed the whole nation with cupidity. Cabral was sent for this purpose, not to discover lands; the names in their repertory were now barely sufficient to designate the islands, capes, ports, bays, coasts, and continents. Their desires were set on other things; other hopes seethed within them: “Good luck! good luck! Many rubies, many emeralds!”

It was resolved to send a fleet to India, for now that the way was known there was nothing to fear and no reason to diminish the number or tonnage of the ships. Pedro Alvares Cabral was appointed admiral of the fleet, which consisted of thirteen ships and carried twelve hundred men. The fleet raised anchor in the Tagus on the 9th of March, 1500. The shouts of the sailors as they worked at the capstan in unison, a sound as sad and mournful as the sea; the low murmur of the cables in the hawses; the whistle of the masters as they directed the manœuvres; the many-coloured flags flying in the breeze; the sails half-furled upon the masts, made a vivid picture of the nation which in the year 1500 was also setting out, shriven and well-disposed, upon this long voyage of a little more than a century, full of disease and shipwreck, at the end of which waited a tomb vast as the sea and silent as the ocean in the funereal calm of the tropics.

Cabral’s voyage, besides beginning the Portuguese dominion in India, had really two desirable results: it swept away the two legends of Prester John and of the “sea of darkness.” He discovered Brazil and returned to tell Emmanuel that the supposed emperor of the East was a miserable black heathen king, intrenched in the inaccessible mountains of Abyssinia. In pursuit of a myth, drawn by an abyss, Portugal discovered the continents and islands of the Atlantic and reached India. For the sake of an illusion they achieved the reality which struck the world with wonder. The world is a mirage and men are but shadows borne upon the cunning winds of destiny. With the lands discovered and the seas ploughed from east to west, it still remained to unite these two halves of the known world, and sail round them, to make sure that they lay whole and complete in the hands of men. This was the effect of the voyage of Magellan (Magalhães) twenty years after. The sea was dark no more, the great conquest was complete. But a new enterprise now revealed itself—to devour what was discovered, to assimilate the world. The whole of Portugal embarked for India in Cabral’s fleet.

THE CONQUEST OF INDIA

[1500-1502 A.D.]

On the 13th of September of the year 1500, Cabral reached Calicut. He went, not like Vasco da Gama, as a discoverer, but as the emissary of the noble Portuguese monarch, the bearer of his letters and proposals of alliance to the rajah of Calicut. As such he was received in a solemn audience. The Portuguese, donning their richest clothes and their best and brightest arms, thought to make an impression upon the Eastern potentate by their riches; but the representatives of Europe, poor and strong, were to be outdone by the magnificence of opulent India. The polish of their arms was dimmed by the blaze of precious stones “whose rays were blinding.”

The rajah was borne in a palanquin, or litter, upon the shoulders of his nobles, reclining upon silken cushions among coverlets worked in gold thread, falling in folds and edged with borders encrusted with precious stones. The litter advanced slowly, under a silken canopy fringed with gold, and within this double tabernacle appeared the black rajah, covered with precious stones. It was blinding to look upon him. On each side of the canopy were pages stirring the air with fans of peacock feathers, and beside the palanquin came those who bore the insignia of royalty—the sword and dagger, the foil of gold, the symbolical lily-flower, the ewer of water, and finally the cup into which the king spat the betel, the chewing of which makes the teeth pink, and gives “a most sweet breath.”

Throughout the whole length of the procession and bringing up the rear were bands of musicians rending the air with their drums, tom-toms of gold and silver suspended by cords from poles of bamboo, and enormous trumpets, some straight and some curved, raised in the air, which gave the musicians the appearance of elephants with golden trunks, their flags encrusted with rubies and emeralds.

The reception was conducted with solemnity on either side, although they could not understand each other well; the scribes displayed in vain their long palm leaves covered with writing; the Portuguese by signs indicated their wish to establish factories there. The scribes gradually came to understand, and distrusted; and the Portuguese also distrusted the smiles of the rajah. In spite of this, however, their request was granted, and Cabral founded the first Portuguese factory in India at Calicut. Afterwards the Moors came and exclaimed against the intruders who were despoiling them, and, favoured by the natives, fell upon the factory, murdering all the Portuguese therein—fifty in all. Then followed the terrible vengeance of the admiral. He took ten ships of the Arab merchants, and put the crews, five hundred men, to the sword; bombarded the city, and set it on fire.

The burning of Calicut on the 16th of December, 1500, was the gloomy dawn of modern oriental history. In the middle of January (1501) Cabral loaded his ships with pepper and cinnamon and returned to the kingdom. Of the thirteen ships with which he set out a year before, barely three returned with him. The terrible enemy though conquered was not subdued, and this first expedition to India, the first act of a tragedy of more than a century, sketched out the course of its action; assassination, fire, massacre, shipwreck; the sword and pepper; the soldier’s arms in one hand, the merchant’s scales in the other—a modern Carthage; and in the background the open maw of the sea, ready to devour men, ships, and treasure; a perennial fount of vice pouring forth torrents of wickedness.

To inflict a terrible chastisement upon the rajah and to consolidate the factory of Cochin by fortifying it, was the object of the second fleet which set out from Lisbon in February, 1502, under the command of Vasco da Gama, the implacable captain. The story of the voyage is full of horror; and the revenge of the captain a proof of the sanguinary, impassive, and cruel coldness which does indeed exist in the almost African temperament of the Portuguese. Obliterated in peace and subjection it ever bursts out afresh in dominion, victory, and warfare. If such sentiments, alive in the soul of Gama, inspired his actions, his campaign followed no plan, nor could his rude spirit entertain the wide views of the statesman. If he had any plan in view, it was to amaze India by the cruelty of his deeds, and dominate it by the terror of his slaughters. Navigating the Indian seas, Gama met a ship of Arabian merchants going to or coming from Mecca. Besides the crew the ship carried 240 men, passengers with their wives and children. This was on the 1st of October, 1502; “which I shall remember all my life,” wrote the pilot, still horror-stricken at the remembrance of the cowardly way in which the ship was set on fire with all whom it contained, so that every soul perished in the flames or in the sea. Well pleased with himself, the captain steered for Calicut. He intimated to the rajah that he must expel all the Moors, who numbered five thousand families, the richest in the city; saying that any servant of the king Dom Emmanuel was worth more than the Zamorin, and that his master had power to make every palm tree a king! As was to be expected, the rajah refused. Then the captain, who upon anchoring had captured a considerable number of merchants in the port, ordered their hands and ears to be cut off, and crowded them into a boat in which they drifted ashore with the tide, bearing Gama’s answer to the refusal of the wretched prince.

[1502-1503 A.D.]

Then he began the bombardment, November 2nd. The city was in flames for the second time, and the lamentations of the people answered the cynical and ferocious laughter of the sailors sheltered behind the sides of the ships near the guns which vomited fire. This was a foolish, cruel, and cowardly deed; for the short lances and arrows of the natives could not measure themselves against the grenades fired from afar on board the ships. Gama left part of his fleet in India under the command of Vincente Sodre, as eminent and celebrated a man as the admiral, whose uncle he was.

A Portuguese Captain of the Sixteenth Century

The Portuguese dominion thus assumed from the very first the twofold character which it never lost in spite of all subsequent attempts at law and order. On the sea was anarchy and theft; on shore, a succession of blood-thirsty depredations. Vasco da Gama showed how to rule by fire and sword; Sodre showed how to reap a harvest at sea by boarding the ships of Mecca. Piracy and pillage were the two foundations of the Portuguese dominion, its nerves were cannon, and its soul was pepper. When Gama returned from his second voyage a third fleet left Lisbon (April, 1503) with Alfonso de Albuquerque and Duarte Pacheco on board. They went to Cochin to assist the rajah in his war against the rajah of Calicut, and built the first fortress in India. Albuquerque returned to the kingdom; Pacheco remained at Cochin with the troops and ships prepared for the attack. The hero—for he fought like a wild beast in his den of Kambalaan, nobly, disinterestedly, and fiercely—said at once that now all lay with the artillery. This will explain the possibility of the resistance of Pacheco’s seventy men, feebly assisted by the natives, against the fifty thousand attributed to the army of Samundri, rajah of Calicut. But the artillery alone would not have sufficed to repulse the solid body of the enemy’s columns, if the courage and wonderful rapidity of the marches, the ubiquity, so to speak, of the first soldier-hero of the East, had not supported the powerful means of defence. The fleet of Lopo Soares Albergaria brought back Pacheco to the kingdom in 1505. Being a simple and upright man he returned rich in wounds and poor in money and diamonds; he had remained in the captaincy of São Jorge da Mina, from whence he was brought in irons because of the accusations brought against him, to languish in prison for a long time and to die at last in poverty and oblivion. “The fate of this hero,” says Goes,[n] “was of a nature to warn mankind to beware of the inconstancy of kings and princes and their small remembrance of those to whom they are bound.” And yet Dom Emmanuel owed the consolidation of his still incipient empire in the East to this man.

[1505-1509 A.D.]

Dom Francisco de Almeida was the man chosen to be governor of India, now constituted a viceroyalty. He is the first of the successive figures presented by the Portuguese empire of the East; and the first of the three most notable viceroys. The government of India formed three great men—Castro, who may be called a saint; Albuquerque, to whom the name of hero is better adapted; and Almeida, a wise administrator and intelligent factor. The viceroy, his plans matured by observation on the spot, and the first naval war with which he was received by the unrepentant rajah of Calicut, mentally completed his system of government. “Let all our strength be at sea,” he said; “let us refrain from appropriating the land. The old tradition of conquest, the empire of such distant lands, is not desirable. Let us destroy those new races (the Arabs, Afghans, Ethiopians, and Turks) and reinstate the ancient races and natives of this coast; then we will go further. Let us secure with our fleets the safety of the sea and protect the natives in whose name we may practically reign over India. There would certainly be no harm in our having a few fortresses along the coast, but simply to protect the factories from surprise, for their chief safety will lie in the friendship of the native rajahs placed upon their thrones by us, and maintained and defended by our fleets. What has been done so far is but anarchy, scarcely an outline of government, a system of murder, piracy, and disorder which it is necessary to remedy.” The difficulties seemed to him more formidable in that “the past warfare was with beasts, but now we are to fight Venetians and the Turks of the sultan.” The former impunity disappeared as soon as the Venetians and Egyptians launched a powerful fleet upon the Red Sea, with artillery.

Dom Francisco de Almeida advanced up the coast, leaving behind him a trail of ashes and blood which everywhere marked the passage of the Portuguese. The Egyptian admiral still feared the viceroy, and as soon as the fleet had anchored and grappled with his ships, he meant to cut the cables and drift ashore, dragging the Portuguese with him, where the Indian launches and fustas might fall upon them furiously. But the viceroy perceived the snare and ordered the anchors to be prepared in the stern, and the enemy’s ships went ashore alone. It was the 3rd of February (1509), the feast of St. Braz, at noon. The confusion of races gathered in that fight was inextricable; the banners of the cross and crescent flying from the masts covered the most extravagant sentiments and varying beliefs. The truth is that they fought not for faith or fatherland, but furiously disputed the spoils of India; and covetousness can make brothers of men of every faith and children of every race. There were French and Germans as bombardiers on board the Portuguese ships; there were Indian Brahmans and even Moors. On the other side in the confusion of ships there might be found from the Nubian to the Arab; from the Ethiopian to the Affran; there were Mussulmans of every caste; Persians and Rum[161] of Egypt—mercenaries from all parts to whom this generic name was given. Besides the heathen multitude was the Venetian renegade or Catholic—but above all the merchant, who had come with artillery to the Indian Sea by order of his republic to defend the interests of his associates in the commerce of the East. Around the confused bands on board the fleet of the Rum gathered the dark mass of Indians in their junks, from Diu in Guzerat and from Calicut in Kanara.

Once more the waters of the Indian Sea were stained with crimson. Countless numbers perished. The wounded floated, crying for mercy and receiving bullets. At last, after the scenes and episodes proper to such tragedies, the victory fell to the viceroy who destroyed Rum and Indians. This naval victory had a higher importance even than the victories of Duarte Pacheco in Cochin, for the Indians, observing and considering, recognised that the Portuguese forces were invincible not only to themselves but also to the Rum of Egypt and the artillery of Venice. The viceroy remembered that he had lost his son, and “he went and sat under the awning, a handkerchief in his hand which could not stem his falling tears.” All thronged to console him, and recovering his spirits he arose, drying his tears and calling them his sons, and said that this grief had pierced and must ever remain in his heart, but bade them rejoice at the gallant vengeance which God in his mercy had bestowed upon them! But to complete his vengeance for the death of his son, he ordered prisoners to be tied to the mouths of the guns, and the heads and scattered members of these unfortunate wretches were thrown into the city of Kanara like shot. The death of his son disturbed his sound judgment and transformed his former opinions of a statesman to blood-thirsty furies, attested by the devastation of the coast of Guzerat. He yielded also to the intrigues and slanders of the captains who had come from Ormus, recently conquered by Albuquerque and ruled with the terrible wildness of his titanic enterprises. They scoffed at the viceroy who had just finished his term of office, and at Albuquerque, already appointed from Lisbon to succeed him; and treacherous accounts of the excesses of the wise Almeida had already reached the court. The dungeon of Duarte Pacheco awaited him in payment of his labours. However, on his journey to the kingdom he landed on the coast of Kaffraria, and was killed by the natives with assegais and javelins.

His plan of government, though wise, was chimerical, for India itself was insanity. Only a man of genius like Albuquerque could make the doomed enterprise great. Only a saint like Castro could save the Portuguese valour from the stain of positive ignominy. Dominion, as Almeida conceived it, was not to despoil; it was armed protection extended to a commerce, free on one side, and the monopoly of the state or appanage of the crown on the other. The captains and governors should be simultaneously commercial agents of his majesty, the high trader in pepper. This required a stolidity of which the Dutch alone were capable and that at the cost of salaries which outweighed temptation. Besides this, the Portuguese flung themselves famished upon this eastern banquet, as did the races of the north, centuries before, upon the banquet of Gaul, Italy, and Spain. No one could have wrenched from their fangs the palpitating flesh which they so anxiously devoured; the fatal consequences which Dom Francisco de Almeida wisely foretold were inevitable. Albuquerque in Ormus, Goa, and Malacca, established on land the limits of the empire, which in his predecessor’s judgment should have floated vaguely on the waves.

King Emmanuel forgave everything, crimes, robbery, incendiarism, and piracy, so long as they sent him what he most longed for, curiosities, novelties and riches, to fill his palaces in Lisbon and dazzle the pope in Rome with his magnificent embassy. “Send pepper, and lie down to sleep,” said Tristan da Cunha later on, writing from the court in Lisbon to his son Nuño, governor of India. The sack of the East—such a name best fits the Portuguese dominion—was already ordained in Lisbon.[m]

[1495-1515 A.D.]

Albuquerque, like Almeida, for all his splendid services, was rewarded with envy and ingratitude. His abilities, his bravery, his successful administration made the courtiers fear or pretend that he aimed at an independent sovereignty in those regions; and by their representations they prevailed on the king to recall him. Dom Lopo Soares was despatched from Lisbon to supersede him. But before his successor arrived, he felt that his health was worn out in the service of his country; he made his last will, and died at sea, within sight of Goa. However violent some of his acts, his loss was bewailed by both Indians and Portuguese. He certainly administered justice with impartiality; laid no intolerable burdens on the people; restrained the licentiousness of his officers; and introduced unexampled prosperity throughout the wide range of the Portuguese establishments. If to this we add that the qualities of his mind were of a high order, that he was liberal, affable, and modest, we shall scarcely be surprised that, by his enthusiastic countrymen, he was styled the Great. It is probable that no other man would have established the domination of Portugal on so secure a basis: it is certain that no other, in so short a period, could have invested the structure with so much splendour. His remains were magnificently interred at Goa, and his son was laden with honours by the now repentant Emmanuel—the only rewards of his great deeds (1515).

Under the successors of Albuquerque, the administration of India was notorious for its corruption, imbecility, and violence, and in the same degree as wisdom and justice were discarded, so did the military spirit decay.[e]

EMMANUEL THE FORTUNATE

When Dom Emmanuel I had been proclaimed king in the town of Alcacer on the 27th of October, 1495, he had reached the age of twenty-six. He had found everything prepared for a quiet and prosperous reign; his predecessor, João II, had smoothed the way for him by overthrowing the power of the nobility. The conciliation of the fidalgos and great lords was easily effected.

Two matters seriously occupied the new king during the first years of his reign—his marriage, and the discovery of India. In the hope that he or his descendants would one day unite the crowns of Spain and Portugal, Dom Emmanuel desired to marry the widow of his nephew. The Catholic sovereigns, having first approved the king of Portugal’s request, appointed as their agent Ximenes, who was afterwards cardinal. The marriage of the king, Dom Emmanuel, and Doña Isabella of Castile being agreed upon, a treaty was made at Burgos, on the 30th of November, 1496, in which large dowries in money were promised on both sides.

[1496-1500 A.D.]

In 1497, the king sent his delegate to Castile to continue the negotiations, and a new article was introduced into the treaty, to which the Catholic sovereigns attached extraordinary importance, going so far as to make it a question of annulling the treaty of Burgos and breaking off the marriage. This article was that Dom Emmanuel should expel from his kingdom and dominions all the Jews or Moors who refused baptism, and all those who had been found guilty of heresy or apostasy, the clause to be fulfilled before September, 1497. Such was the origin of the greatest political mistake and blackest injustice perpetrated by the “fortunate” king, Dom Emmanuel, which left an indelible stain upon his happy reign; for the ambition of eventually uniting the crowns of Portugal and Castile cannot be considered a sufficient excuse. Dom Emmanuel fulfilled this treaty, expelling from his kingdom all the Jews and free Moors who refused baptism, including all those unfortunates who, banished from Spain in 1492 by the Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella, had fled to Portugal thinking to find in that country a refuge from the intolerance and tyranny of Castile. In October, 1497, the marriage of King Emmanuel of Portugal with the princess Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, and widow of Prince Alfonso, son of João II, took place in the town of Valencia de Alcantara.

It seemed at first that Dom Emmanuel’s lucky star would not abandon him in his relations with Castile. Indeed the kings of Portugal and Castile were still at Valencia de Alcantara when they received the news of the unfortunate death of the prince Don Juan, heir to the crown of Castile. By this event Doña Isabella, queen of Portugal, wife of Dom Emmanuel, became heir presumptive to the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Leon. This fact, which plunged the kingdoms of Spain in consternation, filled Dom Emmanuel with joy and promised to satisfy his ambitions more promptly than could have been expected.

But his wife was advanced in pregnancy. In spite of her state, she resolved to continue her journey and go to Saragossa to be sworn heir to the throne of Aragon. Here she was seized with the pains of child-birth, and on the 24th of August, 1498, brought forth the infante Dom Miguel, in that city, his birth costing his mother her life. And Miguel died two years later.

Thus the dream of Dom Emmanuel vanished like smoke. The famous expulsion of the Jews and New Christians, an iniquitous measure, unwise and unpolitic, price of the marriage with Doña Isabella, was not a happy augury. Once more the attempt at an Iberian union under the sceptre of a Portuguese king by matrimonial means had failed.

Dom Emmanuel did not completely lose hope in his relations with Castile[162] by the death of his wife and son. The Catholic sovereigns also seemed determined on an alliance with Portugal. Without loss of time, in the same year, 1500, Dom Emmanuel sent Ruy de Saude, of his council, as ambassador to the sovereigns of Castile with full powers to request the hand of the infanta Doña Maria, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and consequently sister-in-law of the king of Portugal. The heirs to the crown of Castile were Doña Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and her husband, son of the emperor Maximilian and the empress Mary of Burgundy. The princess of Castile had already a son at that time, Charles, who was born at Ghent in Belgium on the 24th of February, 1500, and was afterwards Charles I of Spain and V of Germany. Queen Isabella died on the 25th of November, 1504, and King Ferdinand on the 23rd of January, 1516. The throne of Castile was lost to Dom Emmanuel. The crown of Spain was about to pass to the house of Austria. The wedding to Maria nevertheless took place at Alcacer-do-Sal on the 30th of October, 1500.

[1504-1520 A.D.]

In the same year, 1500, Gaspar Cortereal went to North America and discovered the land of Labrador, which was then called Cortereal, getting beyond 50° north latitude. He returned to Portugal, and repeated his voyage in 1501, but was never heard of again. His brother, Miguel, went in search of him, but he also disappeared. Other lands and islands were discovered in the time of Queen Maria. In 1501, João da Nova,[163] on his voyage to India, discovered the Ascension Island in the Atlantic, and the island which bears his name on the coast of Africa. On his return journey in 1502 he discovered the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic. The Florentine Amerigo Vespucci made voyages to America by order of Dom Emmanuel in 1501 and 1503, discovering Rio de la Plata and Patagonia. This navigator had the glory of giving his name to the group of lands discovered by Columbus, Cabral, etc. In 1506 were successively discovered: by Tristan da Cunha, the islands of that name in the Atlantic; by Ruy Pereira Coutinho and Fernão Soares, the western and eastern coasts of the island of Madagascar; in 1507, the Maldive Islands by Dom Lourenço de Almeida; in 1509, by Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, Malacca (Malay Peninsula) and Sumatra; in 1512, by Francisco Serrão, the Molucca Islands in the Chinese seas; in 1513, by Pedro Mascarenhas, the island to which he gave his name and which is at present called Réunion, in the Indian Ocean; in 1516, Duarte Coelho discovered Cochin-China; in 1517, Fernão Peres de Andrade went to China.[k]

THE GREAT VOYAGE OF MAGELLAN

The celebrated line of demarcation between the right of discovery and conquest was not so clearly understood as to avoid disputes between Dom Emmanuel and his brother sovereign of Castile. His splendid empire in the East had long attracted the jealousy of Ferdinand, who had frequently attempted, but as frequently been deterred by his remonstrances, to share in the rich commercial advantages thus offered to the sister kingdom. After the death of that prince, a disaffected Portuguese who had served Emmanuel with distinction both in Ethiopia and India, and who was disgusted with the refusal of his sovereign to reward his services with becoming liberality, fled into Castile, and told the new king, Charles V of Austria, that the Molucca Islands, in virtue of that line, rightfully belonged to Spain. This man was Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães), whose name is immortalised in the annals of maritime discovery. He proposed a shorter route to the Moluccas than the passage by the Cape of Good Hope—the route by Brazil: he well knew that the American continent must terminate somewhere, and his notion of the earth’s rotundity was sufficiently just to convince him that a western voyage would bring him to the same point as the one discovered by Dias and Vasco da Gama. In August, 1519, he embarked at Seville, with five vessels, over the crews of which he was invested with the power of life and death. On reaching the Brazilian coast, he cautiously proceeded southwards, and in September, 1520, arriving at a cape which he called after the Eleven Thousand Virgins, he passed into the dreaded straits which bear his name. After a passage of fifteen hundred leagues, unexampled for its boldness, he reached the Philippine Islands. Here closed his extraordinary career in 1521. Though the object of the expedition failed, through the catastrophe of its leader, he will be considered by posterity as by far the most undaunted, and in many respects the most extraordinary man that ever traversed an unknown sea.[e]

[1500-1521 A.D.]

In the midst of this splendid series of voyages and discoveries, and of brilliant victories and conquests of the Portuguese in Asia, a fatal incident afflicted Lisbon, in the year 1506. The deplorable catastrophe which plunged the capital in mourning sprang from religious intolerance, of which Dom Emmanuel had given such a fatal example on the occasion of his first marriage. On Low Sunday, the 19th of April, 1506, in the church of St. Dominic in Lisbon, where a vast concourse of people were assembled, the rays of the sun striking upon the splendour of a crucifix produced such a brilliant effect that certain visionaries, religious, or fanatics, took it for a miracle. The cry of “a miracle” already flew from mouth to mouth, when a bystander, more intelligent but with little prudence for his speech, suggested that this effect was due to the reflection of the sun and could only be called a natural phenomenon. This sufficed to cause him to be looked upon as a disguised Jew; a tumult arose, and such was the frenzy of the populace that a horrible massacre upon the so-called New Christians followed.

The massacre lasted for three days. More than a thousand persons perished. Dom Emmanuel was at Aviz at the time. As soon as he heard of what had occurred in the capital, he sent Dom Diogo Lobo, baron de Alvito, and the prior of Crato with full powers to punish the guilty.

He ordered that besides the special punishment of the guilty all the inhabitants should forfeit a fifth of all their property, movable and immovable, to the crown, and that from the date of the sentence there should be no more courts of aldermen, freemen of guilds, nor judges of hospitals; he further subjected the municipality to the jurisdiction of the harbingers, the amount of these impositions to be levied by officers of the crown. This species of interdict lasted for two years.

This splendid period of the reign of Dom Emmanuel, which includes the years 1500 to 1517, the eighteen years during which the fortunate monarch was married to Doña Maria of Castile, the most brilliant in Portuguese history for the military glory and wealth and commerce enjoyed by Portugal, and in which science, letters, and art were so flourishing—was not equally happy as regards public health, the safety of the lives and property of the inhabitants of these kingdoms, and internal administration.

The plague, which had frequently visited Portugal since the fifteenth century, attacked and ravaged the capital many times, as well as other towns of this kingdom; then royalty and those able to follow their example might be seen flying from the infected places. Real preventive measures were never adopted until the reign of João III. Novenas, feast-days, processions of the relics of St. Roque, which Dom Emmanuel sent for from Venice, such were the chief means adopted by the king and people to combat the epidemic, not, however, forgetting the safest course of flight.[k]

Dom Emmanuel died December 12th, 1521, after one of the most glorious reigns on record. Of his public administration enough has been said; and of his private character what little we know is chiefly in his favour. He administered justice with impartiality; and had regulated hours when he received his subjects without distinction; nay, such was his anxiety to do them justice, that if at the expiration of the appointed period complaints remained unredressed, he would sacrifice the hours sacred to enjoyment or repose. The persecution of the unfortunate Jews is a deep stain on his memory; but in every respect he was a great monarch, and his fame filled the world as much as his enlightened policy enriched his kingdom. He despatched embassies to all the potentates of his time—to the king of England, and the ruler of Abyssinia; to the royal chief of Congo, and the sultan of Egypt; to the sultan of Persia, and the emperor of China. Some of them—that, for instance, in which he displayed before the astonished pope and cardinals a Persian panther and an Indian elephant, with their native attendants—were distinguished by magnificence suitable to the lord of so many regions.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[144] A bastard daughter of Ferdinand and her husband were about the same time placed in confinement.

[145] The fate of this prelate has excited little pity among the orthodox Portuguese, such as Lemos[b] because he favoured the anti-pope.

[146] [In the Moorish form Sebta-a, corruption of Septem, from the seven hills on which the town and fortress are built.]

[147] The memory of this English princess is held in high respect in Portugal: “Tantæ enim opinionis apud populum erat, quod solúm illud rectè factum videbatur, quod ipsa comprobâsset,” says Matthæus de Pisano.[c] From the bed of death, this queen, who had all the martial spirit of her high race, delivered each of her sons a sword, with a charge to wield the weapon in defence of widows, orphans, and the country, and especially against the misbelievers.

[148] Azurara,[d] though a Portuguese, shows some pity for the poor infidel wretches: he first curses Cain for setting the example of mortal enmity; and still more the “abominable Mohammed” for separating so many souls from the true faith, and by subjecting his followers both to temporal death by Christian swords, and to everlasting torments by the devils. When a Christian soldier dies, intimates the orthodox sage, he has the prospect of eternal bliss; but for the cursed Moors, what remains for them but brimstone and fire, with Dathan and Abiram?

[149] Duarte or Edward was named after Edward III of England.

[150] In Portuguese computation of the number of their enemies, the reader will do well to drop one cipher; hence he will have one thousand horse and eight thousand foot; as many no doubt as were present.

[151] Read thirteen thousand.

[152] The rule before recommended of subtracting a cipher will not do in this case. The aggregate of horse and infantry must be divided by about fifty to come near the truth.

[153] Even the mild Lemos[b] can curse this man: “Hum malvado monstro horror de sacerdocio, indigno da humanidade. Judas de seu Senhor, o inferne clerigo Martim Vieira.”

[154] This is no exaggerated description; it is taken from a contemporary chronicler.

[155] These miracles are alluded to by Ruy de Pina,[i] by Vasconcellos,[j] and are more boldly detailed by Lemos.[b] [He is called “the constant prince.”]

[156] By the Portuguese historians, the death of Leonora is suspected to have been violent, and the guilt is thrown on the constable of Castile, the famous Alvaro de Luna. But what interest could he have in her destruction? And when did he commit a useless crime?

[157] The address of this count to the king and council, as it appears in Ruy de Pina,[i] is a noble instance of magnanimity and courage. He appealed to his services—and they had been splendid—as a Portuguese noble; to his honour as a knight of England’s proud order—then at least a proud one—the Garter; to his unimpeachable integrity; and to his intimacy with Dom Pedro—that he knew and spoke the truth. Neither his zeal nor the challenge with which he concluded affected Alfonso.

[158] [João II said with justice that his father had left him “only the royal high roads of Portugal.”—Stephens.[l]]

[159] [It is curious that Alexander the Great almost never rewarded those who did not ask, but took joy in granting requests.]

[160] That of Christopher Columbus, whose proposals he himself was ready enough to receive, but was overruled by his council.

[161] [The Rum was a term applied by the Arabs to all subjects of the Roman Empire and continued to be the designation of the inhabitants of western Christendom after they had ceased to yield obedience to the “king of Rum,” the Byzantine emperor.]

[162] [The Portuguese have a saying: “De Castella nem bom vento nem bom casamento” (From Castile neither good wind nor good wedding).]

[163] [A Spaniard by birth, who entered the Portuguese service. His original name was Juan de Nova.]