In 1147, we find the Portuguese intent on regaining Santarem. As the fortifications were strong, and the defenders numerous, he caused a small but resolute band to scale the walls by night: scarcely had twenty-five reached the summit of the wall, when the Moorish inhabitants took the alarm, and flew to arms. In vain one of the gates was opened by the Christians, and the rest of the assailants rushed in. The struggle which ensued, amidst the darkness of night, the clash of weapons, the groans of dying warriors, the shrieks of women and infants who were indiscriminately butchered, constituted a scene which none but a demon would have delighted to witness, which none but a demon would have commanded.[138] In an hour this important fortress, one of the great bulwarks of Christian Lusitania, was in possession of the victor. His success, and the embarrassment of the Mohammedan princes of Spain, both on account of the rising power of the Almohads in Africa, and of the hostilities of the kings of Leon and Castile, emboldened him to attempt the recovery of Lisbon. That city was invested; but the valour of the defenders and the strength of the walls would doubtless have compelled him to raise the siege, had not a succour arrived which no man could have expected. This was a fleet of crusaders, chiefly of English, under the command of William Longsword, who was hastening to the Holy Land. The Portuguese king had little difficulty in persuading them that the cross had no greater enemies than the Mohammedans of Spain, and that the recovery of Lisbon would be no less acceptable to heaven than that of the Syrian towns: the hope of plunder did the rest; the crusaders disembarked, and joined in the assaults which were daily made on the place. After a gallant defence of five months, the besieged showing no disposition to surrender, the Christians appointed October 25th for a general assault on the city. It was carried by storm; a prodigious number of the Moors were put to the sword; the crusaders were too much enriched to dream of continuing their voyage; so that, with the exception of a few who received lands in Portugal, the rest returned to their own country.
But the Mohammedans had still possession of one-half of Portugal, and of several strong fortresses. Having reduced Cintra, Alfonso passed the Tagus, and seized on several fortified places in Estremadura, and even in Alemtejo. It was not, however, until 1158 that he seriously attempted the reduction of Alcacer-do-Sal, which fell, after a vigorous resistance of two months. In 1165 Cezimbra and Palmella were invested: the former place was speedily taken; while, before the latter, he had to encounter a strong force sent to relieve it by the Moorish governor of Badajoz.[139] The misbelievers were defeated, and many places made to surrender.
The martial character of the Portuguese king, as well as the almost uninterrupted success of his arms, inclined him to perpetual war—whether with Moors or Christians appears to have given him little concern. In 1167 he seized on Limia, a territory of Galicia, which he claimed on the ground of its having formed part of his mother’s dowry. The following year he advanced against Badajoz, the Moorish governor of which was a vassal of the king of Leon. Ferdinand II hastened to its relief; but before his arrival the Portuguese standard floated on the towers. The forces of Ferdinand were greatly superior in number, and the Portuguese king prepared to issue from the gates—whether, as the national writers assert, to contend for his new conquest on the open field, or, as the Castilians say, to escape from the incensed monarch of Leon, is uncertain. What is indubitable is that, as he was passing through the gate with precipitation, his thigh came into contact with the wall or bars, and was shattered. He was taken prisoner by the Leonese, and conducted to their king, who treated him with courtesy, and consented to his liberation on the condition of his surrendering the places which he had usurped in Galicia. From this accident, however, he never recovered so as to be able to mount a horse; but it had a much worse effect than his own personal decrepitude: it encouraged the restless Mohammedans to resume their incursions into his territories.
[1169-1185 A.D.]
Though these incursions were repressed by the valour of his son, Dom Sancho, who, not content with defending Portugal, penetrated into the Moorish territory, to the very outskirts of Seville, his people could not fail to suffer from the ravages of the misbelievers. This irruption, too, had its ill effect; it so much incensed Yusuf ben Yakub, the emperor of the Almohads, that he despatched a considerable force into the kingdom. The discomfiture of this army under the wall of Abrantes, and the exploits of the celebrated Dom Fuas Roupinho, one of Sancho’s captains, preserved the country indeed from the yoke of the stranger, but not from the devastation; Alemtejo, above all, suffered in this vindictive warfare.
Alfonso Henriques died December 6th, 1185. His memory is held by the Portuguese in the highest veneration; and hints are not obscurely given that he merited canonisation. He, who had been favoured by a celestial vision at Ourique, whose holy intentions had been so miraculously communicated to St. Bernard, and after death whose mantle, preserved with religious reverence, could cure the diseased, was surely worthy of ecclesiastical deification. That, in after times, when João I gained Ceuta, he appeared in white armour in the choir of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, and informed the holy brotherhood that he and his son Dom Sancho were proceeding to Ceuta to assist their vassals, no true Portuguese ever yet disbelieved: hence the peculiar office which the monks of that magnificent house solemnised in his honour. To a less Catholic reader, “this always adorable king” (sempre o rei adoravel) may, from his indiscriminate slaughter of the innocent and guilty, and from his amours, appear to have been imbued with the imperfections of our nature.[h]
HERCULANO’S ESTIMATE OF THE FIRST PORTUGUESE KING
[1128-1185 A.D.]
Alfonso I was not generally over-scrupulous in sacrificing his knightly generosity and even his political faith to public convenience. The methods which he nearly always adopted to secure the independence and extend the limits of Portugal do more honour to his strength and dexterity than to his delicacy on points of honour. If, however, the severe and impartial historian must perceive blemishes in the character of Alfonso I as a man, justice must, in his favour, throw into the scale the difficulties which beset him in bequeathing to the next generation a well-cemented political existence, and a nationality, as we may say, sufficiently compact to withstand the storms which shook the peninsula. He had to attend to the internal organisation of society and externally to secure it an advantageous position in relation to the various nations of Spain, Christian and Mussulman.