The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

But this peaceful state of things was not to last; the Iberian peninsula, which had remained prosperous under Romans, Visigoths, and Mohammedans, was to suffer centuries of fierce war, war which was to devastate its fields and destroy its cities, but from which its people were to develop into a race of hardy and chivalrous warriors. The people of the peninsula under the rule of foreign sovereigns had become soft and weak, occupied only in accumulating wealth, in which to live in comfort and luxury. Architectural remains of the first thousand years of the Christian era show to what a pitch of comfort the people had attained, but the easy conquests of the Visigoths and the Moors prove that they had become enervated by luxury. During the next five hundred years a different state of things was to appear. The land and the cities alike of Spain and Portugal were to be ravaged and destroyed in terrible wars, and a race of soldiers, bred in all the laws and customs of chivalry, was to arise—a race which, after finding no further exercise for its energies at home, was to extend its power to India and to the New World, as yet unknown, across the Atlantic. Whether it were better to spend lives of luxurious ease or to become warriors was a question not asked of the people of the Iberian peninsula; they had no choice in the matter; but it must not be forgotten in watching the gradual development of this race of warriors in one part of the peninsula, in Portugal, that it was, when formed, to do great things for Europe and for the advancement of a higher civilization than that of the stormy centuries in which it arose.

Towards the close of the tenth century as the Ommeyad caliphate grew weaker, the Christian princes of Visigothic descent, who dwelt in the mountains of the Asturias, began to grow more bold in their attacks on the declining power; and in 997 Bermudo II., king of Gallicia, won back the first portion of modern Portugal from the Moors by seizing Oporto and occupying the province now known as the Entre Minho e Douro. At the beginning of the eleventh century, the great Moorish caliphate finally broke up, and independent Mohammedan emīrs established themselves in every large city, against whom the Christian princes waged incessant and successful wars. In these wars the Celtic inhabitants of the peninsula took but little part; the Moorish armies consisted of Mohammedans, the descendants of the fierce soldiers of Abder-Rahmān and a few Mosarabs, while the Christian armies consisted only of the feudal chivalry of the northern mountains.

In each army different customs prevailed; the strength of the Moors lay in their perfect military discipline and absolute obedience to their generals; that of the Christians in the new impulse to valour given to each individual knight by the laws of chivalry. On neither side was personal ambition without an incentive; Moorish generals hoped to become emīrs, Christian knights, feudal counts. The finest soldiers of both armies were foreigners to the peninsula, being on the one side Africans, on the other either of Gothic descent or else the flower of the chivalry of northern Europe, which went to win its spurs in the wars against the unbelievers, and especially admired and followed the Cid, Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar. Between these two contending bands of warriors the unfortunate Celtic inhabitants of the middle zone of the peninsula were crushed; those of the mountains of the north were by feudal custom obliged to take up arms to follow their lords, and after a century or two those of the centre by the force of necessity became warriors also, and proceeded to drive the Moors back to Africa.

The eleventh century was at first marked by great Christian successes, especially in the west of the peninsula. In 1055 Ferdinand “the Great,” king of Leon, Castile, and Gallicia, invaded the Beira; in 1057 he took Lamego and Viseu; and in 1064 Coimbra, where he died in the following year. He arranged for the government of his conquests in the only way possible under the feudal system, by forming them into a county, extending to the Mondego, with Coimbra as its capital. The first count of Coimbra was Sesnando, a recreant Arab vizir, who had advised Ferdinand to invade his district and had assisted in its easy conquest. He had married a Christian, and was ready to defend his new religion and the dominions he held under the Christian king with all the more vigour from the knowledge that the Moorish emīrs and wālis to the south regarded him as an apostate. But though Sesnando’s county of Coimbra was the great frontier county of Gallicia, and the most important conquest of Ferdinand “the Great,” it was not thence that the kingdom which was to develop out of his dominions was to take its name. Among the counties of Gallicia was one called the “comitatus Portucalensis,” because it contained within its boundaries the famous city at the mouth of the Douro, known in Roman and Greek times as the Portus Cale, and in modern days as Oporto, or “The Port.” This county of Oporto or Portugal was the one destined to give its name to the future kingdom, and was held at the time of Ferdinand’s death by Nuno Mendes, the founder of one of the most famous families in Portuguese history.

Ferdinand “the Great” was succeeded in his three kingdoms of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, by his three sons, Sancho, Alfonso, and Garcia, the last of whom received the two counties of Coimbra and Oporto as fiefs of Gallicia, and maintained Nuno Mendes and Sesnando as his feudatories. Under them were many feudal barons, who held their lands on condition of military service. It is fortunately not necessary to enter into the history of the wars between the sons of Ferdinand; it is enough to say that the second of them, Alfonso of Leon, eventually united all his father’s kingdoms in 1073, as Alfonso VI. The successes of the Christians aroused the stubborn resistance of the Moors; a fresh wave of fanaticism passed over the Mohammedans of Africa and of the peninsula, and a new dynasty, that of the Almoravides arose, which subdued the various emīrs and wālis who had usurped the government of various portions of the old Ommeyad caliphate, and once more united the Moorish power. The new dynasty collected great Moslem armies, and in 1086 Yūsuf Ibn Teshfīn routed Alfonso utterly at the battle of Zalaca, and reconquered the peninsula up to the Ebro. In this battle all the chivalry of the Moors and Christians was engaged, and among the latter was Sesnando, Count of Coimbra, followed by his knights. Alfonso tried to compensate for this defeat and his loss of territory in the east of his dominions by conquests in the west, and in 1093 he advanced to the Tagus and took Santarem and Lisbon, and made Sueiro Mendes count of the new district. But these conquests he did not hold for long; the Almoravides were in the full flush of success, and their armies were made almost irresistible by the fresh fanaticism inspired into them. Their conquests in the east of the peninsula after the battle of Zalaca were followed by rapid successes in the west. In 1093 Seyr, the general of the Almoravide caliph Yūsuf, took Evora from the Emīr of Badajoz; in 1094 he took Badajoz itself, and killed the emīr; and retaking Lisbon and Santarem forced his way up to the Mondego. To resist this revival of the Mohammedan power, Alfonso summoned the chivalry of Christendom to his aid. Among the knights who joined his army eager to win their spurs, and win dominions for themselves were Count Raymond of Toulouse and Count Henry of Burgundy. To the former, Alfonso gave his legitimate daughter Urraca and Gallicia; to the latter, his illegitimate daughter Theresa, and the counties of Oporto and Coimbra, with the title of Count of Portugal.

The history of Portugal now becomes distinct from that of the rest of the peninsula, and it is from the year 1095 that the history of Portugal commences. The son of Henry of Burgundy was the great monarch Affonso Henriques, the hero of his country and the founder of a great dynasty. Up to this time it has been impossible to separate the history of Portugal from that of Spain, but it has been necessary to point out the fact that the history of the two countries had been hitherto identical, in order to dissipate the common error that the Spaniards and Portuguese belong to distinct races. The fact that the history of Portugal does not begin until such a comparatively recent date teaches another important lesson, that the nations of modern Europe must not be looked upon as having been complete entities from the earliest times, but in some instances owe their distinct nationality at the present day to fortuitous circumstances.

In 1095 a powerful county of Portugal was formed: its growth to a kingdom and the extension of its dominions by conquests from the Moors will now have to be studied, as well as its difficulty in maintaining its independence among the other nations of the peninsula, before it can be seen as the leading nation of the world, in the van of the march of European civilization.