Dom João, as before observed, was an illegitimate son of King Pedro, by a lady of Galicia, and born in 1357. At seven years of age he had been invested with the high dignity of grand-master, and his education intrusted to one of the ablest commanders of the order. No man could be better adapted for the conjuncture in which circumstances placed him. Cool, yet prompt; prudent, yet in the highest degree courageous; unrestrained by conscience, and ready to act either with cunning or violence, according as either appeared necessary to his purpose, he would indeed have been a formidable opponent to any sovereign, much more to one so weak as the Castilian. Seeing the favourable disposition of the people, and confiding in his own mental resources, he commenced a policy which, if at first cautious, was sure to prove efficacious. Though Leonora pretended great sorrow for her husband’s death, and endeavoured, by affected mildness, as well as by an administration truly liberal, to win the popular favour, her object was penetrated and despised. But a stronger sentiment was felt for Andeiro, who directed her at his pleasure, and whose death was now decreed by the grand-master. To remove the latter under some honourable pretext from court, he was charged by Leonora with the government of Alemtejo. He accepted the trust; but, accompanied by twenty-five resolute followers, returned to Lisbon, December 6th, 1383, and hastened to the royal apartments, where he knew he should find Andeiro. The guilty pair were as usual together. João struck the count with a dagger; a knight of his suite by a second blow deprived the victim of life.
The tragical deed was hailed with characteristic acclamations by the populace, who, profiting by the example, massacred everyone suspected to be hostile to the pretensions of their new idol, among them the bishop of Lisbon.[145] Their mangled corpses remained long without sepulture, a prey to dogs and beings more savage than dogs. Leonora now fled from the city to Alemquer. On the way, she turned her eyes for a moment back on the towers of that capital, and, in the bitterness of her heart prayed that she might live to see it wrapped in flames. After her departure, João complained that he was unequal to oppose his powerful enemies; and pretended that he would retire into England, to pass his remaining days in tranquillity. This hypocritical policy alarmed the mob, who dreaded being abandoned to justice, and tumultuously flocked around him, insisting that he should assume the regency until Beatrice should become the mother of a son destined to rule over them. With much apparent reluctance, he accepted the proffered dignity, in the resolution of securing one much higher.
The first measures of the new regent were characteristic of the man. He published an edict in which entire pardon was promised to all criminals, whatever their offences, who should assist him in opposing the queen and the Spaniards. At this unexpected call, great numbers—amounting, we are told, to thousands—hastened from their prisons or their haunts to swell his army. Many of the great towns were persuaded to follow the example of Lisbon. The impunity with which his followers perpetrated every possible crime was too alluring not to increase the number. Murder, plunder, rape, and sacrilege were the constant attendants of this lawless party. The abbess of the convent of Castres was dragged from her cloister, poniarded before the high altar, and her body was subjected to brutalities of which not even the mention would be tolerated by the reader. In the end it was dragged to a public square, and there left. This is but one instance, among numbers which have been preserved and among thousands of which the memory has perished, of the monstrous crimes of this interregnum; yet no attempt was made to punish them by the regent, who felt that the license thus allowed was his only tenure on the attachment of his adherents.
The king of Castile invaded the kingdom, received the submission of several places, and penetrated to Santarem, to concert with his mother-in-law, Leonora, the means of annihilating the resources of João. But that ambitious woman, who perceived that with the arrival of the king her authority had ceased, soon regarded his cause with indifference, ultimately with dislike. Her intrigues were planned more frequently to thwart than to aid his measures; so that, aware of her faithless character, he at length caused her to be arrested and to be confined in the convent of Tordesillas, near Valladolid.
[1384-1411 A.D.]
As allusion has already been made [in the history of Spain, Chapter V] to the chief events of the present war, little more remains to be said of them. Though Lisbon was invested both by sea and land, and in a few months reduced to the greatest distress, it was defended with equal ability and valour by the grand-master and his captains. To end the distractions of his country, the states, early in 1385, were convoked at Coimbra. There the creatures of the regent proposed his proclamation as king, as the only measure capable of restoring internal tranquillity, and of enabling the nation to withstand the arms of Castile. They even endeavoured to show that he was the nearest heir to the crown. The issue of Iñes de Castro they set aside, as sprung from an adulterous connection; and the same objection they urged against Beatrice, whose mother they considered as the lawful wife, not of the late king, but of the lord de Pombeiro. On the 6th day of April, 1385, João was unanimously proclaimed king.
João I, having attained the great object of his ambition, vigorously prepared for the war with his rival of Castile. The decisive victory gained by João at Aljubarrota; the alternations of success and failure that succeeded; the arrival of the duke of Lancaster to obtain the Castilian crown in right of his wife Constanza, daughter of Pedro the Cruel: the alliance between the two princes, João marrying Philippa, a daughter of the duke; the subsequent reconciliation between the latter and the king of Castile, cemented by the marriage of the princess Catherine, daughter of the Plantagenet, with Henry, son of Juan, and other transactions of these troubled times, have already been noticed in the history of Spain. Peace was made and broken more than once; the success lay with the Portuguese king—a success, however, attributable as much to the internal troubles of Castile after the death of Juan I as to the valour of João. When a more durable peace was concluded in 1403, the Portuguese had recovered their fortunes, and were in possession of Badajoz.
The next few years were passed in tranquillity by the king in improving the administration of the realm. His salutary severity was above all directed against murderers and robbers by profession, and also against such as took justice into their own hands. By these means he became a popular monarch with all but some of his nobles, whose discontent he had powerfully excited during the late wars. To his valiant constable, Dom Nunho Alvares Pereiro, called the “holy constable,” he was more indebted than to any other cause, both for his crown and for the successful issue of the Castilian war; and he had thought no rewards too great for such services. But if he showered the revenues of whole towns and vast estates on that able and faithful man, he rewarded with a pitiful spirit the attachment of others.