The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

VI.
PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION.

THE reigns of John I., surnamed “the Great,” and of his two successors, occupy nearly a century, during which Portugal was learning to become the greatest nation in Europe. It was the age of exploration and discovery, during which the acutest intellects and the most daring natures in Portugal were dreaming of a new route to India, and were endeavouring to discover it. It was an age of growth, abounding in statesmen, mariners, and chroniclers, who were to have their successors in the all too short but immortal period of Portuguese greatness, in such men as Alboquerque, Vasco da Gama, and Camoens. The history of these maritime explorations and discoveries, of the painful and slow progress down the western coast of Africa, and of the great schemes and efforts of Prince Henry “the Navigator,” will form the subject of a separate chapter; but it is first expedient to study the history of the Portuguese people and monarchy at home during this period, and to see how, from the reign of John I., a new spirit appeared alike among the kings, and the merchants, and the soldiers, which was to culminate in the glories of the heroic age.

King John, after the victory of Aljubarrota had firmly seated him on the throne, felt it necessary to give Portugal such an interval of peace after the great efforts of the Castilian wars, as King Diniz had given it after the cessation of the wars against the Moors. This peace was secured by a wise foreign policy, of which the key-notes were, a close alliance with England, and systematic non-interference with the affairs of Spain. He had seen the value of the assistance of England in the final throes of his struggle with Castile, and the English monarchs on their side felt the advantage of having such an ally as Portugal to act as a thorn in the side of Castile, should the Spaniards come to the help of the French. The statesmanlike idea of Henry II. of England when he supported the proposal of the Count of Flanders for the hand of the daughter of Affonso Henriques, that this marriage should cement an unwritten alliance of England, Flanders, and Portugal, against France, Scotland, and Castile, seems to have been in the minds of the English statesmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Just as Scotland afforded a convenient base of operations, whether military or political, for France against England, so did Portugal give a similar position for the English to act from against Castile, and the subsequent history of Portugal shows how generously and wisely England treated her southern ally. The people of the two nations gladly supported the political ideas of their monarchs and rulers. Each country could supply what the other wanted. From Portugal, the English merchants could obtain fruits and wines, which found a ready market, and the Londoners, not satisfied with supplying the home demand only, distributed these products of the south among the countries of the north, and notably in those lying round the Baltic Sea, Sweden, Denmark, Pomerania, and Lithuania. On the other hand, the Portuguese had no manufactures, and gladly took in exchange for the productions of their fertile soil, the cloth not only of the English looms, but of those of Flanders, in which the London merchants dealt.

This alliance was maintained in spite of dynastic changes and political revolutions in the two countries. In 1389 the name of the King of Portugal was introduced into the Treaty of Paris as an ally of the King of England; in 1398 Richard II. sent a body of English archers, under Edmund Arnold of Dartmouth, to assist in repelling the incursion made into Portugal by the son of Ines de Castro and some Spanish knights; and in 1400 John I. recognized his brother-in-law, Henry of Lancaster, as Henry IV. of England, and was created by him a Knight of the Garter, being the first foreign sovereign to receive that honour. In 1403 Henry IV. solemnly ratified the Treaty of Windsor, and in the following year the illegitimate daughter of John I., by Ines Pires, was promised in marriage to Thomas, Earl of Arundel, one of the leaders of the English nobility. This marriage was regarded as a further bond of alliance, and was celebrated in 1405 in England with the greatest splendour. Equally friendly relations were maintained with Henry V. and with the rulers of England during the minority of Henry VI.; Henry V. sent provisions and troops for the expedition to Ceuta in 1415, and in 1428 a strong force of 144 lances was sent to join the King of Portugal. This English alliance was the key-note of the policy of John I., and it was maintained without a breach from the arrival of John of Gaunt in 1386 until the death of the great Portuguese monarch in 1433.

The internal government of King John I. was hampered in one respect to such an extent as to vitiate the effect of his great administrative reforms. It will be remembered that he was elected to the crown by the Cortes, and followed to the field of Aljubarrota by all classes of the Portuguese people. Yet for some reason he would not trust in the people who loved him, but believing he owed his success to the nobles who had supported him, he began his reign by making extensive grants of lands and privileges to his principal supporters of noble birth. It would perhaps be too much to expect the political knowledge of a statesman in the nineteenth century from a king in the fourteenth, but it seems to posterity that King John greatly over-estimated the assistance of his nobles, and that he over-rewarded them by granting them nearly the whole of the old royal estates of the kings of Portugal. It may be believed that he feared the secession of his nobles to the Castilian party, and that he thought they could take their vassals with them, but whatever may have been the reason, he gave them such enormous grants as to seriously weaken the royal power. These grants however did not impoverish the treasury, which was filled more by the proceeds of the customs duties, a source of income, which his wise commercial policy increased, than by rents from landed estates. So wealthy did he become that he left his mark on the country in his great buildings; besides the magnificent convent of Batalha on the field of Aljubarrota, he constructed no less than four palaces at Cintra, Almeirim, Cezimbra, and Lisbon. The last-mentioned city was his favourite place of residence; under his fostering care it became the official capital of Portugal instead of Coimbra, and soon surpassed the wealth of Oporto as a commercial city. The citizens of Lisbon regarded him much as the citizens of London did Edward IV. a century later; they never forgot his gallant conduct in the great siege, and were at all times ready to obey him and to pay him a fair tithe of their wealth. In one respect especially did King John gratify the aspirations of the religious section of the people of Lisbon, by obtaining the sanction of the Pope to erect the bishopric of Lisbon into an archbishopric.

It is not to be wondered at that King John loved to live in Lisbon, and watch the daily passage up and down the Tagus of the ships, which were making his capital a great commercial centre, when it is remembered how slight was his actual power over the greater part of his kingdom. The other cities were indeed fairly well governed owing to their possession of ancient charters from kings, bishops, or lords, granting them a system of municipal self-government, but the country districts were ruled by the strictest feudal law and custom, and the king was powerless to interfere. Now was to be seen the harm done by the monarchs who had conquered the Alemtejo and the Algarves from the Mohammedans by the distribution of their conquests in estates among the military orders and private individuals. The result was the division of these provinces into enormous feudal counties and lordships, dangerously large to be the properties of subjects in such a small kingdom as Portugal. The condition of the Beira was a little better, and the two northern provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro and the Tras-os-Montes, were, as they are still, the homes of the sturdy Portuguese peasantry, who gave to the Portuguese armies and fleets their bravest and stoutest soldiers and sailors. Bitterly did John the Great repent the mistake he had made by his large grants to the Portuguese nobility, and his consequent inability to correct the most crying evils of the feudal system. He had, however, at the beginning of his reign, some wise and able counsellors, in the Holy Constable, in Lourenço, the brave Archbishop of Braga, and in his great chancellor, João das Regras. With the help of the latter he managed to get some valuable laws passed in the Cortes affecting criminal procedure and jurisdiction, by means of which he somewhat controlled the feudal methods of holding courts of justice without much offending the great nobility, but he dared go no further in this direction, and had to allow many abuses, inherent in the feudal system, to continue to exist. In every other respect his administration was extremely good; his cities grew in wealth; his navy increased in number of ships; his sailors became famous for their daring; and in minor points many reforms were made, such, for instance, as introducing the use of the Portuguese language into the law courts, and changing the era from that of Augustus to that of Christ, which made the date of the year consonant with that of the rest of Christendom.

In such labours passed the first thirty years after the battle of Aljubarrota, and Portugal and its great king became renowned throughout Europe. During this period, a new generation grew up, the sons of the men of Aljubarrota and Trancoso, and the young nobility burned to prove themselves worthy sons of their brave fathers. In their aspirations they were headed by the princes of Portugal. The union of the old royal family of Portugal as represented by King John, with the blood of the English Plantagenets in the person of his queen, Philippa of Lancaster, produced the five famous princes, whose names stand out conspicuously in the history of the fifteenth century. The three elder sons of John and Philippa, Dom Duarte or Edward, Dom Pedro, and Dom Henry, were in 1414 respectively 23, 22, and 20 years of age; they longed to win their knightly spurs, and to show themselves worthy cousins of Henry V. of England. The King of Portugal did not wish to check their ardour; he felt the need of occupying the energies of his youthful nobility; and as there were no enemies at home, he acquiesced in the desire of his sons to attack the old enemies of Portugal, the Moors, in Morocco. By such an expedition against the Mohammedans the young princes would show themselves crusaders, and would find adversaries worthy of their swords, without arousing the jealous watchfulness of the King of Castile. Ceuta was the city of Africa selected for attack, not only because it was the chief port of the Moors in the north-western corner of Africa and threatened the south of Spain, but also because it was the headquarters of the numerous corsairs and pirates, who preyed upon the already growing traffic of Portugal with the west coast of Africa, and at times made descents upon the Portuguese province of the Algarves. The expedition sailed from Lisbon in 1415; the three princes were followed by the flower of the Portuguese chivalry, and accompanied by their two boy brothers, Dom John, who was but fifteen, and Dom Ferdinand not yet thirteen; from her deathbed the Queen sent her blessing, and in the month of June the expedition safely disembarked on the African coast. The Moors fought bravely on their native soil, and it was not until 24th of August that the city of Ceuta was stormed, after a siege, in which the sons of John the Great showed themselves to be gallant soldiers and prudent leaders. This conquest was of importance in two ways; it was the first conquest made by the Portuguese outside the limits of their own country, and was therefore a proof of their energy and the expansion of their power; but, on the other hand, it pointed in a false direction, and was the first of a series of African expeditions, which were not profitable to the country, even when successful, and which terminated in the great disaster associated with the name of Dom Sebastian.