Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

Affonso IV.

King Diniz, the Lavrador, was reconciled to and succeeded by this son, Affonso IV. Under Affonso the relations with Castille became more and more frequent, and in 1340 the Portuguese King and the flower of the Portuguese chivalry helped to win the great battle of Salado against the Moors. Affonso IV, who had embittered his father’s last years, suffered in turn at the hands of his son. It must be allowed that Pedro had some excuse, for the King had sanctioned the murder, during his son’s absence, of the mother of Pedro’s three children, the lovely Inés de Castro. Maddened with grief, Pedro harassed his father’s realm with fire and sword.

Pedro I.

This sorrow seems to have increased the eccentricity of his character, so that at times there seemed a streak of madness. It was he who thrashed the Bishop of Porto, it was he who condemned a stonecutter who had killed a man to the same sentence as a priest who had killed a man: after ascertaining that the priest had been forbidden to say mass as punishment, he sternly forbade the stonecutter to cut any more stones. There was grim humour in many of the sentences of this Rei Justiceiro, and they were always directed against the powerful, the nobility, the clergy, the King’s officials in favour of the weak and unprotected, so that the people sang his praises. He seems to have had something of his grandfather, King Diniz’, art of popularity without his high sense of dignity. Pedro’s passion was for the dance and to the blowing of his long silver trumpets he would dance through the streets of Lisbon by night or day.

Fernando I.

After a reign of ten years (1357-67) he was succeeded by the reckless and irresponsible Fernando, who contrived during his reign of sixteen years to squander the great wealth built up by the Kings of Portugal since Affonso III. He must needs lay claim to the Crown of Castille, and in a series of unnecessary wars brought his kingdom to the verge of ruin. Lisbon was besieged by land and sea by the Castilians in 1373. The King’s unpopularity was increased by his marriage with the wily and unscrupulous Leonor Telles. It was in this reign that occurred the murder of the beautiful and innocent Maria Telles, at the hands of her own husband, brother of the King and son of murdered Inés, by instigation of her sister Leonor. Her fate has been less celebrated than that of Inés, but had no less of tragedy and pathos. During the whole of the fourteenth century a succession of double marriages between the royal families of Castille and Portugal increased the mutual familiarity, if not friendliness, of the two countries. Finally, to crown the impolicy of his whole reign, Fernando married his daughter Beatrice to King Juan I of Castille in the year 1383, thereby almost irretrievably assuring Portugal’s union with or rather subjection to Castille. He had previously settled to marry her to nearly every prince in Europe, but did not consider himself bound by treaties. To him they were mere scraps of paper. The old-fashioned German historian, Heinrich Schäfer, writing in 1835, says that “neither duty nor honour could bind him” to respect them.

João I.

His widow, Queen Leonor, stood for the cause of Castille, wishing the Portuguese throne for her daughter and son-in-law. After her favourite, João Fernandes Andeiro, Count of Ourem, had been murdered almost before her eyes in the palace, and popular excesses at Lisbon, Evora and other towns had fully showed the danger of her position, she retired from Lisbon and joined the Spanish invader. Early in 1384 King Juan I was at Santarem, styling himself King of Castille, León and Portugal. Thus Portugal was ruled at one and the same time by two Kings John I, for the Infante João, Master of Aviz, illegitimate son of King Pedro, and intensely popular, especially at Lisbon, was now king in all but name. Many of the Portuguese nobility favoured the cause of Castille, and King Juan I appeared to have good chance of ultimate victory. Queen Leonor soon found that she had exchanged one difficult position for another. She was virtually a prisoner in the King’s hands, and was finally relegated to the Convent of Tordesillas. The Castilians besieged Lisbon closely by land and sea, and only the plague in their ranks brought relief to the starving city. On the 6th of April, 1385, the Infante João was formally chosen King of Portugal. His chief supporter was, like Napoleon, worth a whole army. Others might waver, but in Nun’ Alvares’ straight and clear mind loyalty to Queen Leonor, who was held to have forfeited loyalty, could not weigh for an instant against his love of an independent Portugal. To secure that, he said, he would fight against his own father. Against his brother he did fight, and no suspicion of the loyalty of the Constable, not long out of his teens, could be instilled into the mind of his friend João I, who rewarded him for his victories with well-nigh half his kingdom. The first great Portuguese victory was at Trancoso in July, 1385, followed on the 15th of August by the battle near Aljubarrota, in which the flower of the Spanish nobility, and of Portuguese nobles fighting on the side of Castille, fell. It was a victory of King and people over the nobility. King Juan fled in haste to Santarem, and thence to Spain. Nun’ Alvares in October won another great victory at Valverde, and after that there was little more fear of serious Spanish invasion. Fighting, however, went on at intervals, till a truce in 1389 was followed by a more permanent truce in 1400, and by a treaty of peace in 1411, after the death of King Juan’s successor, Henrique III. The last great achievement of King João I’s great reign was the conquest of Ceuta. The expedition was saddened at its outset by the death of the Queen, of plague, a few days before the King and his three older sons, Duarte, Pedro, Henrique, sailed on their crusade against the Moors (1415). The expedition was completely successful. Ceuta was taken immediately owing to the eager heroism of the Princes and their Portuguese followers. This was the first of Portugal’s great deeds beyond the seas. The last years of King João I’s reign were peaceful, and when he died in 1433, two years after the death of his life-long friend, Nun’ Alvares, Portugal was as independent as Spain or any other country, and her alliance with England already ancient and secure.

Duarte.