Chart of the Mediterranean Sea by Willem Barentszoon. Engraved in copper 1595.
Almost unaltered copy of a Portolano from the 14th century. (Orig. size 418 x 855 m.m.).
[(see list of maps)]
(4.) And when the Crusading Age passed away, it left behind an intercourse of Portugal with England, Flanders, and the North Sea coasts, which was taken up and developed by Diniz and the kings of the fourteenth century, till under the new Royal House of Aviz, in the boyhood of Henry the Navigator, this maritime and commercial element had clearly become the most important in the State, the main interest even of Government.
So, from the first mercantile treaty of 1294, between the traders of Lisbon and London, we feel ourselves beyond the mere fighting period, and before the death of Diniz (1325), there is a good deal more progress in the same direction. The English treaty of exchange is followed by similar ones with France and with Flanders, while for the protection of this commerce, as well as to prove his fellowship or his rivalry with the maritime republics of Italy, Diniz,[32] the "Labourer King," built the first Portuguese navy, founded a new office of state for its command, and gave the post to a great Genoese sailor, Emanuel Pessanha, 1317. With the new Lord High Admiral begins the Spanish-Italian age of ocean voyages, and the rediscovery of the Canaries in 1341 is the first result of the alliance. In 1353 the old treaty of 1294 is enlarged and safeguarded by fresh clauses signed in London, as if to guard against future trouble in the dark days then hanging over Portugal.
For the next generation (1350-1380), the national politics are bound up with Spanish intrigues and lose nearly all reference to that larger world, to which the kingdom was recalled by the Revolution of 1383, the overthrow of Castille on the battle-field of Aljubarrota, and the accession of John of Aviz. Once more intensely, narrowly national, one might almost say provincial, in peninsular matters, Portugal then returned to its older ambition of being, not a make weight in Spanish politics, but a part of the greater whole of commercial and maritime Europe. Almost ceasing to be Spanish, she was, by that very transfer of interest from land to sea, fitted for her special part,—
"to open up those wastes of tide
No generation openèd before."
It was through a love affair that the crisis came about. Ferdinand the Handsome, the last of the House of Burgundy to reign in Lisbon, became the slave of the worst of his subjects, the evil genius of himself and his kingdom, Leonora Telles. For her sake he broke his marriage treaty with Castille (1372), and brought down the vengeance of Henry of Trastamara, whom the Black Prince of England had fought and seemed to conquer at Navarette, but who in the end had foiled all his enemies—Pedro the Cruel, Ferdinand of Portugal, and Prince Edward of Creçy and Poictiers.
For Leonor's sake Ferdinand braved the great riot of the Lisbon mob, when Fernan Vasquez the Tailor led his followers to the palace, burst in the gates, and forced from the King an oath to stand by the Castilian marriage he had contracted. For her sake he broke his word to his artisans, as he had broken it to his nobles and his brother monarch.
Leonor herself the people hunted for in vain through the rooms and corridors of the palace; she escaped from their lynch law to Santarem. The same night Ferdinand joined her. Safe in his strongest fortress, he gathered an army and forced his way back into the capital. The mob was scattered; Vasquez and the other leaders beheaded on the spot. Then at Oporto, without more delay, the King of Portugal married his paramour, in the face of her husband, of Castille, and of his own people.