The first great movement of the sort came after Nuno's return at the end of 1443. The men of Lagos took advantage of Henry's settlement so near them in his town of Sagres, to ask for leave to sail at their own cost to the Prince's coast of Guinea. For no one could go without his licence.
One Lançarote, a "squire, brought up in the Infant's household, an officer of the royal customs in the town of Lagos, and a man of great good sense," was the spokesman of these merchant adventurers. He won his grant very easily, "the Infant was very glad of his request, and bade him sail under the banner of the Order of Christ," so that six caravels started in the spring of 1444 on the first exploring voyage that we can call national since the Prince had begun his work.
So, as the beginning of general interest in the Crusade of Discovery which Henry had now preached to his countrymen for thirty years, as the beginning of the career of Henry's chief captain, the head of his merchant allies, as the beginning, in fact, of a new and bright period, this first voyage of Lançarote's, this first Armada sent out to find and to conquer the Moors and Blacks of the unknown or half-known South, is worth more than a passing notice.
And this is not for its interest or importance in the story of discovery pure and simple, but as a proof that the cause of discovery itself had become popular, and as evidence that the cause of trade and of political ambition had become thoroughly identified with that of exploration. The expansion of the European nations, which had languished since the Crusades, had begun again. What was more unfortunate, from a modern standpoint, the African slave trade, as a part of European commerce, begins here too. It is useless to try to explain it away.
Henry's own motives were not those of the slave-driver; it seems true enough that the captives, when once brought home to Spain, were treated, under his orders, with all kindness; his own wish seems to have been to use this man-hunting traffic as a means to Christianise and civilise the native tribes, to win over the whole by the education of a few prisoners. But his captains did not always aim so high. The actual seizure of the captives—Moors and Negroes—along the coast of Guinea, was as barbarous and as ruthless as most slave-drivings. There was hardly a capture made without violence and bloodshed; a raid on a village, a fire and sack and butchery, was the usual course of things—the order of the day. And the natives, whatever they might gain when fairly landed in Europe, did not give themselves up very readily to be taught; as a rule, they fought desperately, and killed the men who had come to do them good, whenever they had a chance.
The kidnapping, which some of the Spanish patriot writers seem to think of as simply an act of Christian charity, "a corporal work of mercy," was at the time a matter of profit and money returns. Negro bodies would sell well, Negro villages would yield plunder, and, like the killing of wild Irish in the sixteenth century, the Prince's men took a Black-Moor hunt as the best of sport. It was hardly wonderful, then, that the later sailors of Cadamosto's day (1450-60) found all the coast up in arms against them, and that so many fell victims to the deadly poisoned arrows of the Senegal and the Gambia. Every native believed, as they told one of the Portuguese captains in a parley, that the explorers carried off their people to cook and eat them.
In most of the speeches that are given us in the chronicle of the time, the masters encourage their men to these slave-raids by saying, first, what glory they will get by a victory; next, what a profit can be made sure by a good haul of captives; last, what a generous reward the Prince will give for people who can tell him about these lands. Sometimes, after reprisals had begun, the whole thing is an affair of vengeance, and thus Lançarote, in the great voyage of 1445, coolly proposes to turn back at Cape Blanco, without an attempt at discovery of any sort, "because the purpose of the voyage was now accomplished." A village had been burnt, a score of natives had been killed, and twice as many taken. Revenge was satisfied.
It was only here and there that much was said about the Prince's purpose of exploration, of finding the western Nile or, Prester John, or the way round Africa to India; most of the sailors, both men and officers, seem to know that this, or something towards this, is the "will of their Lord," but it is very few who start for discovery only, and still fewer who go straight on, turning neither to right hand nor left, till they have got well beyond the farthest of previous years, and added some piece of new knowledge to the map of the known world out of the blank of the unknown.
What terrified ignorance had done before, greed did now, and the last hindrance was almost worse than the first. So one might say, impatiently, looking at the great expense, the energy, and time and life spent on the voyages of this time, and especially of the years 1444-8. More than forty ships sail out, more than nine hundred captives are brought home, and the new lands found are all discovered by three or four explorers. National interest seems awakened to very little purpose. But what explains the slow progress of discovery, explains also the fact that any progress, however slow, was made at all, apart from the personal action of Henry himself. Without the mercantile interest, the Prince's death would have been the end and ruin of his schemes for many a year.
But for the hope of adventure and of profitable plunder, and the certainty of reward; but for the assurance, so to say, of such and such a revenue on the ventures of the time, Portuguese "public opinion" would not probably have been much ahead of other varieties of the same organ. In deciding the abstract question to which the Prince had given his life, the mob of Lisbon or of Lagos would hardly have been quicker than modern mobs to rise to a notion above that of personal gain. If the cause of discovery and an empire to come had been left to them, the labour leaders might have said then in Spain, as some of them have said to-day in England, "What is all this talk about the Empire? What is it to us working men? We don't want the Empire, we want more wages." And so when the great leader was dead, and the people were left to carry out his will, his spiritual foresight of great scientific discoveries, his ideas of conversion and civilisation, were not the things for the sake of which ordinary men were reconciled to his scheme and ready to finish his work. If they thought or spoke or toiled for the finding of the way to India, it was to find the gold and spices and jewels of an earthly paradise.