Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

King Duarte (1433-8) himself married an Aragonese princess, another Leonor. In spite of his good sense and great qualities, in spite of his personal courage amply shown in the expedition against Ceuta, his combination of king and philosopher was not entirely successful. He had the weakness to yield to the fiery determination of his brother, Infante Henrique, to send a force against Tangiers. The expedition ended disastrously (had it been a success there would, of course, be no talk of King Duarte’s weakness). After thirty-seven days of heroic fighting against vast numbers of Moors, the Portuguese were forced to surrender. In return for permission to sail back without their arms, to Portugal, they agreed to give up Ceuta, and the Infante Fernando remained as hostage and died a prisoner after many months of fearful ill-treatment. His brother, King Duarte, had died before him, leaving his wife, Queen Leonor, Regent for the infant King.

Affonso V.

Another of his brothers, the Infante Pedro, soon became Regent, while another, the Infante Henrique, now known as the Navigator, was preparing Portugal’s future glory with a faith and persistency rarely surpassed. At his bidding and under his direction, Portuguese mariners crept down the west coast of Africa, and at his death in 1460 he had cause to feel that his labours had not been in vain, and that a rich field for the merchant and the missionary would yearly extend. The discovery of the Cape of Good Hope followed, and in 1497-9, when Vasco da Gama, rounding the Cape, crossed from East Africa to India, and returned in triumph to Lisbon, this successful enterprise was felt to be, and indeed was, the crown and natural outcome of Prince Henry’s life-work. He was the last of that noble galaxy of brothers. When the Infante Pedro, answering to the wishes of a great part of the kingdom, and especially of the people of Lisbon, assumed the Regency, he ruled firmly and wisely (1438-47), and did not, therefore, make the fewer enemies. Queen Leonor died in 1445, and two years later the young King took power into his own hands. No sooner had Pedro ceased to be Regent than his enemies combined for his ruin, and the King, his nephew, and son-in-law, an amiable but weak young man, was induced to listen to their accusations. The Infante Pedro was banished from the Court, and was given no opportunity of defending himself. The matter finally came to open war, and the King’s large army met the Infante Pedro’s small force at Alfarrobeira in May, 1449. The Infante was killed in a preliminary skirmish. Affonso V (1438-81), gifted with a noble and generous character, as king proved at once weak and obstinate. An extant letter from him to the historian Azurara shows him in a very pleasant light. In his external policy he had two chief aims, to conquer North-West Africa, and to make good his claim to the Crown of Castille. As to the first he obtained some measure of success, so that flatterers called him the “African.” Alcacer was taken in 1458, Tangiers thirteen years later. But the last ten years of his reign had no victories to show. He espoused the cause of Juana, daughter of Henry IV, King of Castille, making it his own by betrothing himself to her (a excellente Senhora). War with Castille followed, and he was defeated at the battle of Toro (1476). He was not more successful in his attempt to obtain the support of France. In his visit to the French Court he was a puppet in the hands of the astute Louis XI, and when he returned to Portugal it was felt that he had failed doubly. Indeed, he had renounced the throne and decided to retire to a convent, but he now reassumed his position as king, although the real power and direction of affairs remained in the vigorous and able hands of his son João. Before Affonso V died, João had effected a peace with Castille (1479), by which the hapless Juana was shut up in a convent, at Santarem.

João II.

Affonso V had always been man first and king by an after-thought, his son João II was always king first. In his reign (1481-95) the royal power was strengthened and made supreme in Portugal. This was indeed the outstanding feature of the rule of the “Perfect Prince,” in whose strong hands Portugal reached the height of her strength, though not of her glory. The most powerful Portuguese subject was the Duke of Braganza, who owned a third of Portugal, or more. The founder of this house was an illegitimate son of João I, married to the daughter of Nun’ Alvares, who had received from the King a large proportion of the towns and territories conquered by his skill and energy in battle. The Duke of Braganza was now arrested by João II and executed at Evora as a friend of Castille, but essentially as a too powerful vassal of Portugal. Part of the nobility, disaffected owing to the King’s strenuous proceedings, and the Bishop of Evora involved the Duke of Vizeu in a plot to dethrone his brother-in-law, although, as it proved, he would have become king in the natural course of events a few years later. King João II’s son, Prince Affonso, married in 1490 to Isabel, daughter of the Catholic Kings, died in the following year at the age of sixteen. The Duke of Vizeu’s plot was betrayed to the King, who acted with his usual energy and decision. His brother-in-law he stabbed to death with his own hand. The other principal conspirators were sentenced to imprisonment or death. The title of the Duke of Vizeu was extinguished, but his younger brother, Manoel, became heir to the throne with the title of Duke of Beja.

Manoel I.

As King Manoel, the Fortunate, he ruled over Portugal for twenty-six years (1495-1521), a period which will always be considered the greatest of Portugal’s prosperity and glory, as well as the golden age of her literature (although her greatest poet, Camões, was unborn when King Manoel died). The fruits of the labours of the Infante Henrique, of King João II, of a long line of glorious or obscure heroes and adventurers and administrators from the time of King Diniz now fell into the mouth of King Manoel. Compared with his predecessor on the throne, he has been aptly described as an orange-tree succeeding an oak. But it must not be supposed that he was without energy, witness the speed with which he prepared to rescue Arzilla in 1508, and the fact that he would be up and at work when most of his subjects were still asleep in their beds. But what astonishes and must ever astonish the world is the mighty achievement of this tiny kingdom. The series of wars with Castille, of adventures along the west coast of Africa, of battles in Morocco, of internal troubles, might seem to justify and explain a period of complete inactivity. Yet in the years that followed the Portuguese conquered not one country or one province, but a whole world.

Portugal’s World-Empire.

To tell the wonderful story of the Portuguese discoveries, culminating in the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Diaz and the voyage of a handful of Portuguese under Vasco da Gama, and how the Portuguese Empire in the East was defended by such heroes as Duarte Pacheco Pereira, and strengthened and extended by the indomitable Affonso d’Albuquerque, would fill volumes. The tiny Portuguese nation provided men to do these deeds, and also historians to record them worthily. Sometimes the hero was himself author, and wrote with a directness and vigour of style scarcely ever attained by Portuguese writers of to-day. Only half a century elapsed between the voyage of Vasco da Gama and the death of D. João de Castro in India in 1548, and into this brief period is crowded a bewildering array of fighters, writers, poets, historians, administrators, men of science, to such an extent that no brief summary of Portuguese history can even record their names. But large tracts of Asia and Africa now acknowledged Portugal’s sway, and all the kings of the East sent costly presents, gold and spices and precious stones, to their suzerain in the West. The name and fame of the Portuguese extended throughout all lands in mixed fear and admiration. Foreign adventurers and merchants and men of curiosity and learning flocked to Lisbon, which for a brief space appeared as the true centre of the universe. The Pope and Cardinals in Rome gazed in wonder at the unprecedented gifts from the East sent by the King of Portugal. But not in the East only were great deeds performed at this time by the Portuguese, for in North-West Africa D. João de Menezes won undying glory by his brilliant military achievements, taking Larache, Azamor (1519), and other towns. When we read that in a single day—in the defence of a fortress they were building in North Africa—1,200 Portuguese are said to have fallen, and know that this was a comparatively unimportant link in the huge chain of empire which Affonso d’Albuquerque (the fear of whose name penetrated far into China) was even then (1515) forging in India, we are not surprised that agriculture in Portugal was neglected and that two generations later King Sebastian could only collect a force of 9,000 Portuguese to accompany him to Africa. Rather we marvel how Portugal could continue so long to sustain efforts so many and so various. For a skilful historian the story of Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries affords an epic subject more wonderful than perhaps any in history—except that of the events exactly four centuries later which welded together another empire and again saw all the Princes of India sending gifts to the West. And the materials to the hand of such an historian are fascinating and abundant, both published and manuscript. Unfortunately the age of King Manoel did not provide a fresh crop of heroes equal to those who had grown to manhood under King João II, and when he died in 1521 the disquieting symptoms were many. In Portugal the real prosperity had been replaced by a garish and deceptive luxury, and the old simple pleasures and jollity had vanished with the old austerity of life. In the East the mighty compelling arm of Affonso d’Albuquerque had sunk to rest in 1515. King Manoel had married as his first wife Isabel, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. She died in childbirth, and their son Miguel died two years later in 1500. Had he lived he would have succeeded not only to the throne and mighty empire of his father, King Manoel, but to the throne and mighty empire of the Catholic Kings. Such a load of empire would seem too great for the shoulders of one ruler to bear, and in the very year of the infant prince’s death the Portuguese Pedro Alvares Cabral’s discovery, or rediscovery, of Brazil added another huge item to the burden and the glory.