The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

The successor of King Edward, his eldest son Affonso V., afterwards called “the African,” was only six years old when he ascended the throne, and his reign commenced with a dispute as to the regency. By his will, Edward had left the regency to his wife, Leonora of Aragon, but this arrangement was not at all satisfactory to the people, and a great Cortes at Torres Novas set aside the will, and appointed Dom Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, to be “defender” of the realm with all the duties of government, the Count of Arrayolos, minister of justice, and Queen Leonora, guardian of her son, the young king, with a large allowance. This arrangement shows how great the powers of the Cortes had become, and a still more important testimony to their recognized influence appears in the motion by Dom Henry, that three members of the Cortes should be annually elected to reside at the seat of government during the months in which the Cortes was not in session. This arrangement was highly unsatisfactory to the queen, who had expected to be sole regent under the terms of King Edward’s will, and, assisted by the discontented nobility, headed by the Count of Barcellos and the Archbishop of Lisbon, she attacked Dom Pedro, and endeavoured by force to overthrow the arrangements made by the Cortes of Torres Novas. The struggle was but a short one; the people of Lisbon rose en masse to support the son of their favourite monarch, John I., in whom they perceived his father’s administrative ability and love for commerce, and the queen and archbishop were forced to go into exile. The result of this movement was to seat Dom Pedro firmly in power with the title of regent and the guardianship of the boy-king.

The regency of Dom Pedro, better known by his title of Duke of Coimbra, is marked by the same features as the reign of his brother Edward; in it appears the same consistent attempt to check the power of the feudal nobility and the same wise encouragement of commerce. His foreign policy followed the same lines, and he maintained the same neutrality with regard to Spain and the same close alliance with England. In 1439 the regent solemnly confirmed the Treaty of Windsor in the young king’s name, and was made a Knight of the Garter, and the same honour was conferred upon Dom Henry, Duke of Viseu, in 1444, and on Dom Alvaro Vaz de Almada, Lord High Admiral of Portugal and Count of Arronches, in 1445. Dom Pedro also encouraged the maritime explorations of Dom Henry and the literary revival, which were making the name of Portugal renowned throughout Europe, and his power seemed to be at its height, when, in 1447, his daughter Isabel was married to her cousin, the king, Affonso V.

But the great regent counted without the enmity of the feudal nobility, headed by his own half-brother, the Count of Barcellos, who was created by the young king Duke of Braganza. This nobleman had always been jealous of the legitimate sons of John I., and in spite of the kind treatment of Dom Pedro, he hated the regent. This hatred he instilled into the mind of Affonso V., who was rather restive under his uncle’s control, and he eventually persuaded the young king that his uncle and father-in-law had poisoned both his father, King Edward, and his mother, Donna Leonora. Affonso V. believed these libels, and ordered the great regent to leave the Court. Dom Pedro obeyed; but the vengeance of the Duke of Braganza was not yet satisfied, and he gladly led an army to arrest the Duke of Coimbra on his estates. Dom Pedro, deserted by all his old friends and sycophants, except the Lord High Admiral, yet determined to fight, and he defeated the Duke of Braganza at Penella. Affonso V. then declared his former guardian a traitor, and summoned the feudal nobility to his side. The nobles were only too happy to aid him, and in the hotly-contested battle of Alfarrobeira the friends of the regent were defeated, and Dom Pedro, Dom Jaymé, his only son, and the Lord High Admiral, were slain, on May 21, 1449.

Affonso V., at the beginning of his personal government, yielded to the influence of the Duke of Braganza and his sons, who humoured his desire for knightly fame and his dream of sitting on the throne of Castile, and who obtained vast grants of royal property for themselves. Among them they secured the lordships of the old royal city of Guimaraens, the birthplace of Affonso Henriques, and even of Oporto, the second city of the kingdom; but they never got possession of the latter, owing to the fierce resistance of the citizens. The young king’s main idea at this time was to win fame as a knight and a crusader, and unfortunately this whim led him towards the country which was to be the tomb of his dynasty. It was to raise funds for the expeditions which won him the title of “the African” that Affonso first issued the beautiful coins known as crusados, and with money raised by this means he paid the expenses of his three expeditions. In the first of these adventures, in 1458, he took Alcazar es Seghir, or Alcacer Seguier; in the second, in 1464, he failed; and in the third, in 1471, he took Anafe, Tangier, and Arzila. It was in these expeditions that he uselessly exhausted the strength of his people, but nevertheless the works of maritime exploration went on apace, though with less energy after the death of Dom Henry “the Navigator” in 1460.

From wasting the power of his kingdom in African wars Affonso V. turned to a still more fatal pursuit, the encouragement of his dream of sitting on the throne of Castile. The lessons of his grandfather’s reign were lost on him; he failed to understand that the two countries had developed on separate lines and could not coalesce, and did not see that in a contest Portugal, owing to her smaller population, must needs have the worst of it, unless the war were national and calculated to rouse the spirit of enthusiasm and not merely dynastic. His family was now at the height of its fame—his aunt Isabel was Duchess of Burgundy; his eldest sister had married the Emperor Frederick III.; his youngest sister had married Henry IV. of Castile; and his remaining sister, Catherine, had been sought in marriage by the son of the King of Aragon and by Edward IV. of England. His first wife, Isabel, the daughter of the great regent, Dom Pedro, had died in 1455, after giving birth to the prince who was to be John II., and it was not until after his third expedition to Africa that he contemplated a fresh marriage, which should give him a claim to the succession to the throne of Castile.

With this idea Affonso V. married his own niece, Joanna, elder daughter of Henry IV. of Castile (though but a girl of thirteen), in 1475, and he claimed the kingdom of Castile in her name. But the Castilians preferred the Infanta Isabella, who had married Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and they were as determined to prevent a Portuguese king from sitting upon their throne, as the century before the Portuguese had been against the union of their country with Castile. The Castilians, fighting for their independence, as utterly defeated the Portuguese at Toro in 1476 as the Portuguese had defeated them at Aljubarrota in 1385. Affonso hurried to France, to beg help from Louis XI.; but his supplication was unheeded, and in 1478 he found himself constrained to sign the Treaty of Alcantara, by which he agreed to send his newly-married bride to a convent. He remained inconsolable at this failure of his schemes, and alternately abdicated and returned to the throne, until his death in 1481.

The “Ré Cavelleiro,” or knightly king, had thus done his best to upset the results of the wise policy of his grandfather, John “the Great.” Fortunately he had not done much harm, and his son and successor, John II., proved himself able to do more than compensate for his father’s mistakes. But it must not be considered that Affonso V. was a worthless king of the type of Ferdinand “the Handsome”; he was rather a restless knight after the fashion of Count Henry of Burgundy. He had literary tastes as well; he wrote much and ably on various subjects, and showed a great knowledge of what a king ought to be—perhaps learnt from the “Cyropaedia” of Xenophon, which had been specially translated for his instruction by the orders of the Duke of Coimbra. He was a liberal patron of men of letters, and made Duarte Galvão “Chronista Mor do Reino,” or Chronicler-General of the kingdom; and he appointed Azurara, another chronicler, librarian and keeper of the archives at the Torre del Tombo. He collected a great library at Evora, and founded the Order of the Tower and Sword; but perhaps the truest sign of the greatness which existed somewhere in his character is to be found in his answer to the chronicler Acenheiro, who asked how he should write the chronicle of his reign, when he said simply, “Tell the truth.”

These, then, were the kings who reigned in Portugal during the age of discovery. It is now time to see the nature, extent, and value of these discoveries, which were paving the way for the heroic age of Portuguese history.