The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

The attempts of the Prior of Crato did not affect the equanimity of Philip II.; he satisfied himself, when he entered his new kingdom, by making fifty-two exceptions to the general amnesty, which he had declared, including Dom Antonio himself and his chief adviser, the Bishop of Guarda. He returned to Spain shortly afterwards, leaving his nephew, the Cardinal-Archduke Albert as viceroy at Lisbon, with a strong guard of Spanish soldiers. The most interesting occurrences of the cardinal’s administration were the risings of the two first “false Dom Sebastians.” It has been said that the lower classes of the Portuguese people refused to believe that the young king was dead, and it was not long before impostors arose, who tried to make profit out of this credulity. The history of these impostors[24] is as curious in its way as those of the “False Smerdis,” the “False Demetrius,” and the pseudo-Louis XVII.s, and proves how strong a hold the memory of Dom Sebastian, in spite of his being a rash and foolhardy tyrant, had taken upon the minds of the Portuguese people. The first two of these impostors, who were mockingly called the “King of Pennamacor” and the “King of Ericeira” from the headquarters of their operations, were Portuguese of low birth, whose risings were easily put down. The original inventor of the idea was the son of a tiler of Alçobaça, named Sebastião Gonzales, who, after leading a profligate life, had retired to a hermitage near Pennamacor. From this retirement he emerged in July, 1584, and declared that he was King Sebastian; that he had escaped after the battle of Alcacer Quibir, and had since been praying in the hermitage, but that the miseries of his people had reached his ears, and he had determined to come forth to remedy them. He was accompanied by two men, who styled themselves Dom Christovão de Tavora and the Bishop of Guarda, and began to collect money in Pennamacor and the neighbourhood. The trio were speedily arrested and marched through the streets of Lisbon to show that they were impostors; and the false Sebastian was then sent to the galleys for life, and the pretended Bishop of Guarda was hanged. In the following year, one Mattheus Alvares, son of a mason at Ericeira, declared himself to be the lamented Dom Sebastian, to whom he bore a considerable personal resemblance, and solemnly promised to marry the daughter of Pedro Affonso, a rich farmer, whom he created Count of Torres Novas. His future father-in-law advanced the impostor a large sum of money, and he had raised a small corps of eight hundred fanatical followers, when the cardinal-archduke thought it necessary to send royal troops against him. The poor enthusiasts were defeated with much loss, and both the pretender and Pedro Affonso were hanged and quartered in Lisbon.

This severe punishment effectually checked the appearance of any fresh impostors in Portugal itself, and the populace, though firmly convinced that Dom Sebastian would one day appear again, were not to be deceived by any more pretenders.

But these stories had spread far beyond the limits of Portugal, and two more attempts to personate the deceased monarch were made in Spain and Italy. The first of these impostors was a handsome young man named Gabriel Espinosa, who bore a striking resemblance to the King of Portugal, and who was given out as Dom Sebastian by a Portuguese Jesuit, named Madujal, who introduced him to Donna Anna, a natural daughter of Don John of Austria, and induced her to believe in him. The whole scheme partook rather of the nature of a personal intrigue than of a political plot. Donna Anna, who was very wealthy, showered favours on the young man and his sponsor, and even advocated his claims to Philip II. The deception was, however, too obviously absurd to gain many supporters, and Espinosa and his clerical adviser were both executed in 1594. Far more curious is the story of Marco Tullio, a poor Calabrian peasant, who could not speak a word of Portuguese, but who nevertheless asserted that he was Dom Sebastian in 1603, twenty-five years after the disaster of Alcacer Quibir. His story was most carefully worked out, and his imposture ranks among the most extraordinary on record. He asserted that he was the king, and had saved his life and liberty by remaining on the battle-field among the dead bodies; that he had made his way into Portugal, and had given notice of his existence to the Cardinal-King Henry, who had sought his life; that he then returned to Africa, because he was unwilling to disturb the peace of the kingdom by a civil war, and travelled about in the garb of a penitent; that he next became a hermit in Sicily, and was on his way to Rome to declare himself to the Pope, when he was robbed by his servants, and obliged to find his way to Venice. When he told this elaborate tale at Venice, he got a few Portuguese residents there to believe in him, and was soon arrested in that city at the demand of the Spanish ambassador as an impostor and a criminal. He was several times examined, but stuck to his story so cleverly, and with such obstinacy, that the authorities, who were not sorry to embarrass the Spanish Government, refused to punish him as an impostor. The story of his claim spread so widely abroad, that the enemies of Spain became anxious to prove it true, and to set him up as a thorn in the side of Philip III. The Prince of Orange went so far as to send Dom Christovão, son of the Prior of Crato, to request the Venetian authorities to make further inquiries; but those prudent governors only held a solemn public examination, when the Calabrian told his tale again, and then expelled him from their dominions without expressing any opinion as to its truth. From Venice he went to Padua in the disguise of a monk, and thence to Florence, where the Grand Duke of Tuscany had him arrested and given up to the Spanish Viceroy at Naples. He was imprisoned in the Castle del Ovo, publicly exposed, and sent to the galleys; and as he made adherents even there, he was transferred to San Lucar, and eventually executed. The singular boldness of this imposture, and the tenacity with which the ignorant Calabrian stuck to his story, in spite of its evident falsity, make it memorable in the history of pretenders.

The “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” as the domination of Spain over Portugal from 1580 to 1640 is called, was a time of unexampled disaster for the country in every quarter, and the Portuguese, with their independence, seemed to have lost all their old courage and heroism. Under the administration of the Cardinal-Archduke Albert great efforts were made to send a powerful contingent to the fleet known as “The Great Armada,” and the destruction of this fleet by the English in 1588 ruined the naval power of Portugal. So low did the country fall, that it could not even defend its own ports, and in 1595 the English, under Sir Francis Drake, sacked the important city of Faro in the Algarves. As a portion of the Spanish dominions, Portugal had to suffer defeat from all the enemies of Spain. The foremost of these enemies were England and Holland, and the Dutch were the first nation to break down the Portuguese monopoly of the lucrative trade with Asia. This they did with the more ease, since, with the true commercial spirit, they not only imported merchandise from the East to Holland, but also distributed it through Dutch merchants to every country in Europe; whereas the Portuguese in the days of their commercial prosperity were satisfied with bringing over the commodities to Lisbon, and letting foreign nations come and fetch them. The incursion of the Dutch merchants into Asia was caused by the action of Philip II. in closing the port of Lisbon to them in 1594; and in 1595 Cornelius Houtman, a Dutchman, who had been employed by the Portuguese as a pilot in the Indian seas, and had afterwards been imprisoned by the Inquisition, led a Dutch fleet round the Cape of Good Hope for the first time.

But before studying the rapid manner in which, first, the Dutch, and then the English and other foreign nations, contended for a share in the Asiatic trade, and eventually destroyed the Portuguese power in the East, it is necessary to draw attention to the fact that this destruction did not commence until the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the reign of Philip III. The ruin of Portugal was indeed due to the policy of Philip II., whose enemies Holland and England consummated it; but it was hardly commenced in his reign, which ended in 1598. Indeed, during that period, when the power of Portugal was on the very point of extinction, its Asiatic trade, and more especially its Indian trade, was at its height.[25] Philip II. faithfully observed the promises he had made to the Cortes of Thomar in this respect. All the viceroys he appointed were Portuguese, and he made no attempt to intrude Spaniards into either official appointments or into the conduct of the Asiatic commerce. The Portuguese viceroys of his reign, Dom Francisco Mascarenhas, Dom Duarte de Menezes, Dom Manoel de Sousa Coutinho, Dom Mathias de Alboquerque, and Dom Francisco da Gama, were all able and enterprizing rulers, who increased the prestige of the Portuguese power throughout the East by many deeds of daring, and especially by the conquest of the King of Kandy in Ceylon. The yearly fleets increased in number; the peoples of the East had got accustomed to regard the Portuguese as invincible; and the wheels of administration, from long practice, ran smoothly. Especially active were the missionaries, principally Jesuits, in Asia, and their progress was forwarded rather than checked by the accession of Philip II. to the throne of Portugal. The bishopric of Goa was raised to an archbishopric in 1577, and suffragan bishops were appointed wherever the influence of the Portuguese spread, and it is curious to note that an important mission headed by Dom Luis de Sequeira, consecrated Bishop of Japan, and Father Alexandra de Valignano, was despatched to Japan to 1598 and had much success.[26] But though the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church in Asia paid much attention to preaching the gospel among the distant peoples of the East, in India they were chiefly occupied in persecuting the Nestorian Christians on the Malabar coast with the help of the Inquisition. These Nestorian Christians were especially obnoxious to the orthodox Catholics, who got the Portuguese to prevent the arrival of any consecrated Nestorian bishop in India by blockading the coast, and who solemnly condemned the doctrines of the Nestorians in the famous synod of Diamper (Udayampura) held by Archbishop Alexis de Menezes in 1599. The history of the work of the Jesuits in India at this time is peculiarly interesting; the keynote to their policy is contained in the following words: “The Christian religion cannot be regarded as naturalized in a country, until it is in a position to propagate its own priesthood;”[27] and it must be remembered that the credit of their activity must not be attributed to Portuguese priests alone, for Jesuits of all nations cooperated in the work of evangelization, and among them should be noted Thomas Stephens, an Englishman and rector of the Jesuit college at Salsette. In preaching, teaching, and writing these early Jesuit missionaries were equally able, and it is recorded that the first book printed in India was printed by the Jesuits at Cochin in 1570. In opposition to this activity must be noted the terrible severity of the Inquisition at Goa, which stained the labours of these early missionaries with blood.

The last twenty years of the sixteenth century, comprised in the reign of Philip II., from 1580 to 1598, mark the height of the wealth and power of the Portuguese in the East, but their fall into nothingness there during the reigns of Philip III. and Philip IV. was as rapid as their success had been astounding. The first great blows were struck by the Dutch merchants, whose ships were sent out at their own expense, and in no way protected by the State. In 1597 two years after Houtman had led a Dutch fleet round the Cape, the Dutch established a factory in Java. In 1601 they defeated the Portuguese governor of Malacca, and took that city; in 1607 they conquered the Portuguese settlements in the Moluccas and Sumatra; and in 1618 they founded Batavia, which became the capital of the trade of the Spice Islands, and soon not only took the place of Malacca, but rivalled Goa. Not satisfied with the trade of the further East, they attacked that of China also, and in 1635 occupied the island of Formosa. At a later date they even ousted the Portuguese from their chief settlements in India and Ceylon, always excepting Goa, which, according to Catholic belief, has ever been preserved to the Portuguese by the holy bones of St. Francis Xavier. Meanwhile, just as the Dutch broke the power of the Portuguese in the Spice Islands and China, a new power had arisen to attack their Indian monopoly. The ancient allies of the Portuguese, the English, now made no distinction between them and their bitter enemies, the Spaniards, and during the last forty years of the “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” they laid the foundation of their empire in India. During the reign of Elizabeth, the English had sacked Pernambuco in 1594, destroyed Fort Arguin on the African coast in 1595, and ravaged the Azores in 1597; during that of James I. they attacked the Indian trade of Portugal. As was the case with the Dutch, the assault upon the Portuguese monopoly was the work of private traders, not of the State. This is not the place to trace the slow growth of the English power in India, but it is enough to say that the English ships went to Asia with no idea of conquest, and solely with the desire to trade. This the Portuguese desired to hinder, and in trying to prevent the English from taking on board cargoes at Surat in 1615, the Portuguese were defeated by Captain Best, and thus lost their reputation for invincibility on the north-west coast of India. The English, instead of showing a bold front, made efforts to live in harmony with the Indian kings, and especially with the Great Mogul, and were rewarded by being looked upon with favour instead of with suspicion, and being allowed to set up many commercial agencies. As traders, the English merchants had no wish to go to war and maintained no armies to defend their agencies, and the only offensive operation they undertook against the Portuguese was in 1622, when they assisted the Persians to capture Ormuz. These rapid onslaughts completely overthrew the Portuguese power in Asia. The Dutch quickly absorbed all the trade of the further East, and of the Spice Islands in particular; the English gained a good hold upon that with Persia and North-western India; and in 1629 the Portuguese commerce with Bengal was almost destroyed by the capture of their headquarters, Hūglī, by Shah Jehān who killed one thousand Portuguese, and carried over four thousand, including women and children, into captivity. Even smaller European nations attacked their monopoly, and in 1616 the Danes established themselves at Serampore and Tranquebar. Against all these blows, Portugal made little resistance; Golden Goa was shorn of its pre-eminence; and the Portuguese fleets when homeward bound were preyed upon by the Dutch and English cruisers.

It was not only in the East that disasters fell in quick succession upon the Portuguese, but efforts were made also by the Dutch to dispossess them of their great empire in South America. The history of the Dutch in Brazil is as remarkable as their history in Asia, and considering the small size of Holland, the same feeling of astonishment, which strikes the student, when he reads of the exploits of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, affects him, when he examines the enterprises of the Dutch in the seventeenth. It was in 1624, when success was assured in Asia, that a Dutch West India Company was founded to drive the Portuguese out of South America. The new company at once sent a fleet under Admiral Willikens to attack Brazil, and this admiral met with little opposition in the capture of San Salvador, the capital of Portuguese South America. The Portuguese governor-general, Dom Diogo de Mendonça, abandoned the city, but the Archbishop, Dom Miguel de Teixeira, took his place, and calling on his clergy to take up arms, he defended the city for a few days, and then retired to a neighbouring port. Admiral Willikens plundered the city, and returned with a vast booty, to the delight of his employers, and left only a small garrison behind, which was soon driven back in all its forays, and eventually closely blockaded by the gallant old archbishop, who took the title of Captain-general of Brazil. In April, 1626, strong reinforcements arrived under Dom Emmanuel de Menezes, and the city of San Salvador once more fell into the hands of the Portuguese. It is not necessary to trace the exact history of every Dutch expedition to Brazil; it is enough to say that from 1626 to 1637, plunder was brought home every year and distributed to the shareholders of the company, while no real attempt at establishing trade or at colonization was made. This policy naturally caused the Dutch to be loathed by the Portuguese settlers as robbers and pirates, and kept them in a state of perpetual disquietude. In 1637, a great ruler, Count Maurice of Nassau, was sent out by the Dutch West India Company as Governor-general of their possessions in South America, which extended roughly over the four Captainships of Pernambuco, Tamaraca, Paraiba, and Rio Grande. This great general and statesman attempted to entirely destroy the Portuguese power in South America, and to establish a Dutch dominion there. His warlike expeditions were successful, excepting an attack on San Salvador, and he also managed to establish a general system of administration over the seven northern captainships with his capital at Mauriceburgh opposite the strongly fortified island of the Recife. It was Maurice of Nassau, who gave up the system of plundering the Portuguese, and substituted that of taxing them, and his power was at its height, when the news of the revolution of 1640, and of the overthrow of the Spanish domination, arrived in Brazil and revived the spirits of the Portuguese colonists.

To compensate for all these losses, the destruction of the monopoly of the Asiatic trade, the loss of Ormuz and Malacca, and the reduction of the greater part of Brazil, what advantages had Portugal received? The promises made by Philip II. to the Cortes of Thomar were mostly broken by his successors. The Duke of Lerma and the Count-Duke of Olivares, the all-powerful ministers of Philip III. and Philip IV. tried to see how far and how entirely they could prove to the Portuguese people that they were subject to Spain, and not a free nation. The Cortes, instead of being summoned frequently, was only summoned once during the reign of Philip III., in 1619, in order to recognize his son as heir to the throne; and was never summoned at all during the reign of Philip IV. Spaniards filled every office in the kingdom, and more especially in the garrison towns; Spanish ecclesiastics were consecrated to Portuguese bishoprics; and the Portuguese council at the Court of Madrid was reduced to a single secretary. Taxation was heavy, and the revenue from it was not spent in the country, and the promise that no Portuguese land should be granted to other than Portuguese subjects was often broken, conspicuously in the case of the Duke of Lerma, who secured a grant of the royal domains of Beja and Serpa. But Lerma and Olivares forgot that the Portuguese were a separate race, with a great and noble history; they would not be trampled on for ever, and to the surprise of Spain, the little country rose in rebellion in 1640 and put an end to the “Sixty Years’ Captivity.”