The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

Dom Sebastian then decided to have all the glory of conquering Morocco for himself, and his hopes reached their height when Maulā Ahmed managed to buy over the Kaid of Arzila and handed over that place, one of those surrendered by John III., to the Portuguese monarch. Maulā Abd-el-Melik, who was in bad health, tried to dissuade his rash opponent from attacking him, and in a letter pointed out that he was the rightful Sherīf of Morocco. He even went further, and offered to the young king a district of ten miles round each of the Portuguese towns—Tangier, Ceuta, Mazagon and Arzila—if he would give up supporting the usurper. Never might the hackneyed line of Horace be quoted with more justice than in regard to the rash young Christian monarch:

“Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.”

No amount of opposition could check the king’s ardour; he believed himself already surpassing in glory both John “the Great” and Affonso “the African,” and proceeded to raise money in every possible way. The treasury was nearly empty owing to peculation and bad management, and it was filled by imposing new taxes, by further harrying the converted Jews, and by partial bankruptcy. As the country was nearly drained of men the king had to hire mercenaries belonging to different nations, who were not properly equipped, and he never seemed to realize the difference between an expedition to take a sea-side town and the invasion of a powerful empire. If Affonso V. had met with difficulty in taking Tangier, how could Sebastian hope to penetrate to Fez, seventy miles up the country? Dom Sebastian trusted too much to the promised help of Maulā Ahmed; he believed other cities would yield as quickly as Arzila; and he had been thoroughly convinced by the expelled usurper that his uncle Maulā Abd-el-Melik was not only hated in Morocco, but enfeebled by illness; and that his offers of peace were dictated by fear.

The preparations made for the campaign were ridiculous in the extreme; all the most experienced generals and most tried Portuguese soldiers were in India, and the Portuguese troops who were enlisted consisted of a few old veterans whose time had expired in Asia, and of youthful raw recruits. These latter were not in the least disciplined, and were officered by young courtiers, who may have been brave, and were certainly inexperienced. The king himself intended to take the command in person, and instead of making plans for the conduct of the campaign and looking after his troops, he spent his time in borrowing the sword of King Affonso Henriques from the convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, and in having a banner worked in which the arms of Portugal were for the first time surmounted by an imperial crown. This banner was solemnly blessed by the archbishop in the cathedral of Lisbon on the 14th of June, and the king then considered that all was ready.

On the 24th of June, 1578, King Sebastian set sail with a fleet of fifty ships of war and about nine hundred transports under the command of the Admiral of Portugal, Dom Diogo de Sousa, carrying fifteen thousand infantry, two thousand four hundred cavalry, and thirty-six guns. Of this army only about ten thousand were Portuguese, the rest consisting of Spanish and German volunteers and mercenaries, and of nine hundred Italians, under the command of a gallant Englishman, Sir Thomas Stukeley. This well-known English Catholic, who had been created Marquis of Leinster by the Pope, had been stopped with his soldiers by Sebastian while on his way to raise an insurrection in Ireland against Elizabeth. In spite of the desperate hurry in which he had been to start, Sebastian made no attempt to hasten his passage and try the effects of a surprise. He first stopped at Lagos in the Algarves, then at Cadiz, where he was sumptuously entertained by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and did not reach Tangier until July 6th. He was there met by his Mohammedan ally, Maulā Ahmed, who handed over his son as a hostage, but who only brought eight hundred Moors instead of the army which he had promised. Sebastian at first amused himself with hunting, while his opponent was concentrating his forces, and then repulsed a few Moors in a skirmish, which he magnified into a victory. From Tangier he suddenly carried his army to Arzila, where he encamped beneath the walls and wasted time. At last he determined to hold a council of war to decide in what way the army should attack Larache; Maulā Ahmed wisely suggested by sea, so as to have the advantage of a convenient means of retreat to the ships, but Sebastian answered the Moorish prince so rudely that he left the council, and the king decided to march by land. Even at this last moment Maulā Abd-el-Melik offered to cede Larache to Sebastian if he would cease his military operations, but the rash young king returned no answer whatever, and the Sherīf of Morocco, finding all his efforts for peace repulsed, determined to crush the invader.

On the 29th of July the march inland, away from the cool breezes off the sea, was commenced under the burning sky of an African summer; the soldiers were soon maddened by hunger, thirst, and heat, and by the incessant attacks of the Moorish skirmishers; and the army was dispirited before a battle took place. These miseries continued for five days, until August 3rd, when the Portuguese had some success in a skirmish, and Dom Sebastian took up what he considered a strong position near the little town of Alcacer Quibir, or more correctly El-Kasr el-Kebīr. The position was from a military point of view utterly indefensible, for both flanks were exposed, and Maulā Abd-el-Melik, who was now face to face with the Christians with an army of forty thousand cavalry and fifteen thousand infantry saw that the Portuguese king was lost. At daybreak on the 4th of August, 1578, the battle commenced with some brilliant charges on the part of the Portuguese, but in a short time the wings of the Moorish army, which were entirely composed of cavalry, overlapped the small Christian army, and for four hours the army of Dom Sebastian was compelled to defend itself. The result of the continued charges of the Moorish cavalry could not be doubtful, and at the end of the four hours’ fighting nearly the whole of the Christian army was cut to pieces. The Moorish monarch, Maulā Abd-el-Melik, had been in the agonies of death when the battle commenced, and died in his litter from the exertion of trying to mount his horse at the first charge of the Christians, placing his finger on his lip as a sign that his death should be kept secret for a time. His rival, Maulā Ahmed, was drowned in crossing the Wed or Wady M’Hassan, and his brother, Ahmed ibn Mohammed, was declared king by the soldiers at the conclusion of the battle. The slaughter was terrible; more than nine thousand Christians were killed, and all the rest, except about fifty, were taken prisoners. Sir Thomas Stukeley, after gallantly defending himself, was killed, with many of the chief Portuguese nobles and prelates, including Dom Jaymé, brother of the sixth Duke of Braganza, the Duke of Aveiro, who had commanded the cavalry, and the bishops of Coimbra and Oporto, while among the prisoners were the Duke of Barcellos and Dom Duarte de Menezes, Quarter-Master-General of the army.

Dom Sebastian throughout the battle behaved himself as a gallant knight, though he had not been a prudent general, and when the fortunes of the day went against him he determined to lose his life also. Many accounts are given of his death. One tradition says that he was taken prisoner by some Moors, who stripped him of his arms, and began to quarrel about him, and that a Mohammedan general rode in amongst them, and shouting out, “What, you dogs, when God has given you so glorious a victory, would you cut each other’s throats about a prisoner,” immediately struck the King of Portugal down in ignorance of his rank. Another story is that the king met Dom Luis de Brito with the consecrated banner wrapped around him, and said, “Hold it fast, let us die upon it;” and that when, after fierce fighting, Brito was taken prisoner with the banner, he saw the king riding away unpursued. Dom Luis de Lima also asserted that he saw the king making his way towards the river unhurt. According to the most trustworthy account, Christovão de Tavora, the king’s equerry, showed a flag of truce, and offered to surrender with the fifty horsemen, who still remained about the king, when Sebastian suddenly dashed on the Moorish cavalry, who, irritated at this breach of faith, instantly slew him, as well as the brave equerry, who followed his master. Anyhow, it is certain that the new Sherīf Ahmed ibn Mohammed sent out Sebastião de Resende, a gentleman of the bedchamber, to discover the corpse of the king, and that a naked body was brought in covered with wounds, which the Portuguese prisoners at once recognized as that of the ill-fated Dom Sebastian. The body was temporarily buried in the palace at Alcacer Quibir, and removed in the following September to Ceuta, at the request of Cardinal Henry. It was eventually taken to Portugal in 1582, by the orders of Philip II., and buried with great pomp in the church of St. Jerome at Belem.

It is important to lay stress on this subject, because for many years the lower classes of the Portuguese people refused to believe that their sovereign was dead, a belief encouraged by the stratagem of a wounded noble on the evening of the fatal battle to gain admission into the city of Tangier by asserting that he was the king. It was this belief which led to the acceptance of the successive false Dom Sebastians, who played a part in the ensuing half century, and it had a still further influence upon the whole future of the Portuguese people. That the “Principe Encuberto” or Hidden Prince would appear again became a religion, and the sect of the Sebastianistas became a powerful body of fanatics. Their belief was fostered by the princes of the House of Braganza as patriotic, and whenever Portugal has been subject to a great strain, the Sebastianistas have always come to the front. Even at the present day they are not extinct, and Sir Richard Burton asserts that he has met with them in the interior of Brazil. It was this firm belief that gave point to the remark of Lord Tyrawley, in the English House of Lords in 1763: “What can one possibly do with a nation, one half of which expect the Messiah, and the other half their king, Dom Sebastian, who has been dead two hundred years?”