On the sea the first to signalise himself was Fuas Roupinho, in the twelfth century; and thenceforth Portugal never failed to produce hardy if obscure seamen, to fish for cod in the Northern Seas or to discover the west coast of Africa till Bartholomeu Diaz rounded the Cape of Storms in 1487, and King João II rechristened it the Cape of Good Hope.[3]
João II (1481-95), “the Perfect Prince,” or as Queen Isabella of Spain more bluntly called him el hombre, “the man,” was one of a series of great kings of the House of Avis, founded by João I (1385-1433) “of good memory,” darling of the Lisbon people. João I was succeeded by his eldest son, the noble but unfortunate student-king Duarte (1433-8). Other brothers of Prince Henry the Navigator, scarcely less famous, were the Infante Pedro, statesman and author, who travelled through “the seven parts of the world,” and the Infante Fernando, who died slowly with saintly patient heroism as a prisoner of the Moors in Africa.
Under Manoel I (1495-1521) the Great, the Fortunate, and his son João III (1521-57), Gama, Albuquerque and Dom João de Castro are the most conspicuous names; but Dom Francisco de Almeida, first Viceroy of India, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, discoverer of Brazil, Fernão de Magalhães, the harsh and fiery navigator[4] who first penetrated by sea to the North Pacific and was slain in the hour of his triumph—his name lives in the Straits of Magellan—and many more were almost equally celebrated. But especially among the discoverers and early adventurers in India the men of fame are but types of hundreds of less fortunate heroes who perished. Men left Portugal with their lives in their hands, and for every one who (like Fernam Mendez Pinto) survived to tell the tale scores sailed away who were never seen or heard of afterwards.
Yet the population of Portugal in the first third of the sixteenth century may have been but 1,500,000, and certainly did not reach twice that figure. That is a fact that must uplift and inspire those who study Portugal’s history or consider her future. For the Portuguese of the sixteenth century fought not against or not only against hordes of undisciplined savages, but against Moors and Turks highly civilised and well equipped with artillery.
Perhaps the secret of their success is that their motto was “God, King, and Country,” and that each man among them relied, under Heaven, on himself, not on this or that sect or party or philosophy, election promises or political programmes. They did not wait and watch for some wonderful Ism, like a brazen serpent, to change the face of the world: they as individuals simply, persistently set to work and—changed it. In less than fifty years after the Portuguese first reached India they were in Japan, converting and civilising the Japanese, and had made possible that tremendous saying of Camões:
E se mais mundo houvera lá chegára.
And had there been more world they would have reached it.
That is, of course, a terrible condemnation as well as an undying honour, for unless each generation were to produce an Albuquerque there could be no hope of maintaining conquests so wide, and Albuquerque had had his hands tied by his own countrymen, so that, like the blinded Samson, he achieved the ruin of his enemies by his unaided strength and at the expense of his own life. But if Portuguese statesmanship was at fault in India, there never failed a sprinkling of individuals who spent their lives in ungrudging service and heroic effort to counterbalance errors committed, and often died heartbroken for their pains.
Two anecdotes will give an idea of the spirit that animated the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. During the siege of Diu a soldier, Fernão Penteado, seriously wounded in the head, went to the surgeon, but, finding him busy with other wounded and hearing the noise of a Turkish attack, he returned to the fight and came back with a second serious wound in the head, only to find the surgeon busier than before. Again he went to fight, and when the surgeon was finally able to attend to him he had a third wound, in his right arm.
The second incident occurred in North-West Africa. During a fight Dom Affonso da Cunha, aiming a mighty cut with his sword at a Moor, missed him, and the sword leapt from his hand. “Go fetch it, you dog!” roared Cunha, and the terror-stricken Moor obediently picked it up and gave it to him, trembling. Cunha thereupon spared his life.