The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

The accession of Ferdinand, called “the Handsome,” the only son of Dom Pedro by Constance Manuel, marks a crisis in the history of the Portuguese monarchy. As a natural result of the long era of peace and prosperity which had succeeded the final conquest of the Algarves, the people of Portugal had become more wealthy, more cultivated, and more conscious of their nationality than almost any people in Europe while the Court had become more and more dissolute, and more out of consonance with the feelings of the people. If the Portuguese monarchy was to continue to exist, it was obvious that it must again become a truly national monarchy, as it had been in the days of Affonso Henriques and of Diniz, which should lead the way in finding new outlets for the growing energies of the people, and that the kings must remember their duties, and not think only of their pleasures. The affection the people showed for Dom Pedro, who was by no means a good king, but rather a despot of the Oriental type, was a proof that they were ready to recognize with gratitude the efforts of a just monarch, and their energies, now that, owing to long peace, they were the richest nation in the peninsula, only needed to be directed. Neither the priesthood nor the nobility showed any disposition to check the dissoluteness of the Court. The bishops lost their old commanding influence, as the Papacy, on which they depended, became degenerate, and the nobles, now that they had no longer wars to occupy them, either became courtiers and abettors of the vices of the kings and princes, or else lived on their feudal estates and imitated them. The people had now no share in the government. The power which the Cortes had obtained during the reign of Affonso III. was in abeyance, because the king did not need its help against his bishops and nobles, but it was only in abeyance, and ready to spring forth again into new life.

The life and reign of Ferdinand “the Handsome” are marked, like those of his father, by a romantic amour, which, if not so tragic as the story of Ines de Castro, had far greater political importance. Ferdinand was a weak and frivolous, but ambitious, king, who, after binding himself to marry Leonora, daughter of the King of Aragon, suddenly surprised every one by claiming the thrones of Castile and Leon in 1369, on the death of Pedro “the Cruel.” This claim was derived through his grandmother, Beatrice of Castile, and was good in law, and Dom Ferdinand was favourably received at Ciudad Rodrigo and Zamora. But the majority of the Castilians, both noble and plebeian, had no desire to see a Portuguese monarch on their throne, and therefore espoused the cause of the illegitimate Henry of Trastamare as Henry II. of Castile and Leon. The war which followed turned to the advantage of the Castilian pretender, and the contest ended in 1371 by the intervention of Pope Gregory XI., when Ferdinand agreed to surrender his claim to the throne of Castile, and to marry Leonora, daughter of Henry II. However, in spite of the Pope, this treaty was never carried out, for at the marriage of his half-sister, Beatrice, the daughter of Dom Pedro and Ines de Castro, to Sancho Count of Alboquerque, King Ferdinand saw and fell passionately in love with Donna Leonor Telles de Menezes, daughter of a nobleman in the Tras-os-Montes, and wife of João Lourenço da Cunha, Lord of Pombeiro. This passion was the king’s ruin, for the object of it was a sort of Portuguese Lucrezia Borgia, of whom horrible stories are told, which historical research has unfortunately shown to be only too well founded. At this very period, when she first met the king, she made no attempt to repulse his advances, though she was a married woman, and she bore an undying feeling of revenge against her sister, Donna Maria Telles, for her attempts to repulse the amorous monarch. In spite of her sister’s efforts, Donna Leonor managed to captivate the king, who, in his infatuation for her, and in compliance with the dictates of her ambition, refused to marry the daughter of Henry II. of Castile. This refusal exasperated the people of Lisbon, who knew that the Castilians would not tamely suffer such an insult, and a great popular tumult and riot burst forth in the city. The story of this riot has been admirably told by the chief modern historian of Portugal, Alexandra Herculano, in one of his historical novels, and it affords a striking example of the political foresight of the people, and of their conviction of a coming revolution. The popular leader was a tailor named Fernan Vasques, under whose command the mob burst into the palace at Lisbon, hunted in vain for Donna Leonor, and made King Ferdinand swear to marry the Castilian infanta on the very next day. But Ferdinand escaped the same night to Santarem, and once there with his beloved, he forgot his oath, and sent all the troops he could collect to punish the rioters of Lisbon. They made but little resistance, being unprepared for their sovereign’s want of faith to his plighted word, and Fernan Vasques, the tailor, and his principal followers were beheaded. This cruel punishment inflicted, the king betook himself to Oporto, and there married the Donna Leonor at the Church of S. João do Hospital, although her first husband was still alive. It shows to what a depth of degradation the Portuguese nobles had sunk that all the nobility, with the exception of Dom Diniz, one of the king’s half-brothers, acquiesced in this bigamous marriage, and recognized Donna Leonor as queen. At the head of those who submitted were Dom João or John, the elder son of the late king by Ines de Castro, and Dom John, known as “the Bastard,” the Master of the Knights of Aviz, and the son of Pedro by Theresa Lourenço.

The people of Lisbon were right in believing that the Castilians would regard the marriage of Ferdinand to Donna Leonor as a deadly insult to their infanta. Henry II. at once invaded Portugal, and laid siege to Lisbon; Ferdinand lived meanwhile quietly at Santarem with his queen, and made no effort to intervene; and the war would have ended badly for Portugal, had not Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, who happened to be in Spain as legate, interfered, and by using all the authority of the Church, forced Henry II. to retire, and to make a treaty of peace with Ferdinand at Santarem. Even after this proof of the power of Castile, and after the sufferings incurred by the people of Lisbon during the siege, Ferdinand refused to keep the peace. He would not believe that Henry II. was firmly established on the throne, and in 1373 he treacherously renewed the negotiations which he had entered into the year before with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This son of Edward III. claimed the throne of Castile for his wife Constance, the daughter of Pedro “the Cruel,” and Ferdinand signed a treaty of alliance with Edward III., through his ambassadors, João Fernandes Andeiro and Vasco Domingues, by which he agreed to support the claims of the English prince. But Donna Leonor did not approve of the English alliance, and in 1374, Ferdinand as usual broke his plighted word, and again made peace with Castile.

The queen was now supreme; her weak and vacillating husband was her slave, and the tyranny which she exercised was odious in the extreme. Her wealth was great, for the king had in his infatuation granted her for her own use the lordship of many of the most important cities belonging to the Crown, including Villa Viçosa, Abrantes, Almada, Cintra, Saccavem, Alemquer, Obidos, Torres Vedras, and Pinhel, and she had obtained great estates for her brothers, of whom the elder, João Affonso Telles de Menezes, became Count of Barcellos, and the younger, Gonçalo, Count of Neiva. Her former husband, João Lourenço da Cunha, tried to revenge himself for the loss of his wife by attempting to poison the king; she at once had his lands confiscated, and ordered his execution, which he only escaped by a timely flight into Gallicia. Her revenge upon her sister, Maria Telles de Menezes, whom she had never forgiven for opposing her marriage with the king, was horrible in its wickedness, and affords an indisputable proof of her cruelty of disposition. Maria, who was as beautiful as her sister, and far more virtuous, had inspired a real passion in the bosom of Dom John, the king’s half-brother and the elder son of Ines de Castro. The young couple were married in 1376, and were as happy as they deserved to be. Enraged at their happiness, and the more so, because they had a little son, whereas her own sons both died in childhood, the queen set to work, like Iago, to instil the passion of jealousy into the young husband. She was soon successful, and Dom John murdered his wife with his own hand, in his palace at Coimbra, while she was vainly protesting her innocence. When the deed was done, the queen came into her dead sister’s presence, and laughingly informed the unhappy wife-murderer that the accusations were untrue. At this mockery, Dom John would have slain her, and on being prevented by her guards, he fled to Castile. Donna Leonor had not even the merit of being constant to her uxorious spouse, but carried on an open intrigue with João Fernandes Andeiro, the former ambassador to England, whom she persuaded the king to make Count of Ourem. Ines Affonso, the wife of Gonçalo Vaz de Azevedo, first Grand Marshal of Portugal, happened to hear a declaration of love made by the queen to her lover, and she informed Dom John “the Bastard,” Master of the Knights of Aviz. Some spy told the queen, and she determined at once to rid herself of the pair. She had a letter forged, purporting to be written by them to the king of Castile, full of treasonable passages, and on the strength of it, she obtained the king’s order for their arrest. When they were safely in prison, she tried to persuade her husband to sign an order for their execution without trial. King Ferdinand, who had a real affection for his half-brother, refused, and Donna Leonor thereupon forged his signature to an order for them to be beheaded at once. Fortunately for Portugal, the governor of the Castle of Evora, where they were imprisoned, Vasco Martins de Mello, refused to obey, and the future saviour of Portugal escaped.

The wonder is that the Portuguese people submitted so long as they did to this tyranny, and it shows how deeply they felt the debt due to their great monarchs, such as Affonso Henriques and Dom Diniz, that they made no attempt to overthrow their unworthy descendant. So strong was their attachment to the hereditary principle, that at a great Cortes held at Leiria in 1376, the queen’s only surviving child, the Donna Beatrice, was recognized as heiress to the throne. This declaration was of the greatest importance, for it governed the future rule of succession in the kingdom; and by declaring females able to succeed rejected the well-known Salic law, which prevailed in France and other countries. The queen steadily encouraged the king’s ambition to sit upon the throne of Castile, and when his hopes revived, on the death of Henry II., she persuaded him once more to send her lover, the Count of Ourem, as ambassador to England. Richard II. received him cordially, and Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, next brother to John of Gaunt, and better known by his subsequent title of Duke of York, agreed to bring military assistance to the aid of Ferdinand. In 1381, the Earl of Cambridge arrived accordingly with two thousand English men-at-arms, and, as had been suggested by the Count of Ourem, his eldest son, Edward, afterwards second Duke of York, was solemnly betrothed to the Donna Beatrice, the heiress to the throne of Portugal. The feeble Ferdinand, as usual, refused to keep faith, and terrified by the approach of a Castilian army, he deserted the English, who immediately began to ravage the country round their camp near Oporto, while he made peace with John I. of Castile at Salvaterra. By this treaty, which was signed on April 2, 1383, and in which the hand of Donna Leonor is clearly to be perceived, it was arranged that John I. should marry Donna Beatrice, who was but eleven years old, and that Leonor should be Regent of Portugal if Ferdinand died, until Beatrice’s eldest son came of age. At the wedding, which took place at once, Ferdinand was too ill to be present: but the queen and her lover were there in his stead, and behaved with such unseemly hilarity that many of the Portuguese nobility, headed by Nuno Alvares Pereira, who was to be known in Portuguese history as “The Holy Constable,” could not refrain from openly expressing their disgust. Six months afterwards, on October 22, 1383, King Ferdinand died, and Donna Leonor assumed the regency in the name of her little daughter, the Queen of Castile.

But she did not hold it long. The whole Portuguese people detested her, and their spirit of nationality was outraged by the contemplated union of their crown with that of Castile. Dom John “the Bastard,” the Master of the Order of Aviz shared both their personal hatred for the queen, who had tried to take his life, and their political desire for independence; and on December 6th, he headed an insurrection in Lisbon and slew the queen’s lover, Andeiro, Count of Ourem, with his own hands in the palace itself. The people everywhere applauded his action, and attacked the friends of the queen; in Lisbon the Archbishop Martinho and the Abbot of Guimaraens were killed upon the same day, and the example was followed in the provinces, where among other notable murders, the abbess of the Benedictine nuns was killed at Evora, and the Lord High Admiral, Lançarote Pessanha, at Beja. Leonor among whose faults want of courage could not be reckoned, fled to Santarem, and not only summoned her son-in-law, John of Castile to her help, but began to raise an army from among the vassals of her own adherents. At this news, Dom John felt a momentary movement of weakness, and spoke of retiring to England, but the people of Lisbon, through the mouth of the popular leader, the cooper, Affonso Annes, so eloquently begged him not to desert them in their peril, but to stay and be their ruler, that he consented on December 16th, to remain, and named two of his wisest adherents, João das Regras and Nuno Alvares Pereira, to the offices of chancellor and constable.

Dom John then took upon himself the title of Defender of the Realm; but he knew how little chance Portugal could have against Castile without some powerful ally, and he therefore sent first Thomas Daniel and Lourenço Martins, and then his Chancellor and the Master of the Knights of Santiago to beg for help from England. The longed-for aid seemed tardy, and Dom John proceeded to put Lisbon in a state of defence, and despatched the “Holy Constable” to raise an army in the northern provinces. In 1384, John of Castile slowly entered Portugal with a great army and joined Donna Leonor at Santarem. But the allies soon quarrelled as to the government in future of the country they both believed to be already conquered, and Donna Leonor recommended her adherents to join Dom John. Not satisfied with this, she planned to poison her son-in-law; but her intention was discovered in time, and the wicked queen was sent by John of Castile to the convent of Tordesillas, in his dominions, where she ended her days in 1386. This act of justice done, the king of Castile laid siege to Lisbon. The resistance was worthy of the cause, which was indeed that of the continued existence of Portugal as an independent country. The priests fought at the head of their parishioners; the archbishop of Braga behaved as a gallant knight; and Dom John showed his fitness to be the monarch of a warlike people. A terrible pestilence, which broke out in the besiegers’ camp, did more mischief than the bravery of the besieged, and John of Castile had to retire discomfited. But it availed little to have repulsed one Spanish army; the relative sizes of Portugal and Castile, made it obvious that the struggle would be a severe one; the independence of Portugal was at stake, and the Portuguese fought as men fight for their existence as a nation. The heroic Constable enforced the lesson of the successful defence of Lisbon by his defeat of the Castilians at Atoleiros, but it was felt to be necessary to take yet stronger measures, if the war was to end in a triumph.

The first of these measures was to legalize the position of Dom John, the gallant leader of the people. A great Cortes was summoned to meet at Coimbra, and in it João das Regras declared the throne of Portugal to be elective on April 6, 1385. This proposition was agreed to by acclamation, and after the Chancellor had produced a Papal bull, declaring the children of Dom Pedro by Ines de Castro to be illegitimate, the Cortes unanimously elected Dom John “the Bastard,” to be king of Portugal. This measure legalized the position of Master of the Knights of Aviz, who took the title of John I., and is known in Portuguese history as John “the Great”; and the people believed the measure to have the sanction of heaven when the news arrived that the Holy Constable had won a great victory over the Spaniards at Trancoso, in which four hundred Castilian knights were killed. The spirits of the Portuguese were further raised by the landing of five hundred of the famous English archers, under the command of three squires in the service of John of Gaunt named Northberry, Mowbray, and Hentzel; but this assistance was counterbalanced by the arrival of two thousand French knights, who had joined the king of Castile. The two armies met at Aljubarrota on August 14, 1385, and it was there that the independence of Portugal was secured, and the House of Aviz made good its title to the throne. The Holy Constable commanded the vanguard; Mem Rodrigues de Vasconcellos the right, and Antao Vasques de Almada the left; while Dom John rode from place to place and never failed to be in the post of danger. Ten pieces of ordnance were used, this being their first appearance in the military history of the peninsula; the English archers did yeoman service, and repeated the glories of Crécy and Poitiers, and after a hard-fought struggle the Spaniards fled in confusion. Then did John I. feel himself king indeed; and he erected on the spot where his victory had been won, the magnificent convent of Batalha, which recalls in its name the famous Battle Abbey erected on the field of Hastings. This victory was followed up by another at Valverde, and then by the news that John of Gaunt was on his way with a powerful English army. The Portuguese felt that they had anew achieved their independence.