[1496-1500 A.D.]
In 1497, the king sent his delegate to Castile to continue the negotiations, and a new article was introduced into the treaty, to which the Catholic sovereigns attached extraordinary importance, going so far as to make it a question of annulling the treaty of Burgos and breaking off the marriage. This article was that Dom Emmanuel should expel from his kingdom and dominions all the Jews or Moors who refused baptism, and all those who had been found guilty of heresy or apostasy, the clause to be fulfilled before September, 1497. Such was the origin of the greatest political mistake and blackest injustice perpetrated by the “fortunate” king, Dom Emmanuel, which left an indelible stain upon his happy reign; for the ambition of eventually uniting the crowns of Portugal and Castile cannot be considered a sufficient excuse. Dom Emmanuel fulfilled this treaty, expelling from his kingdom all the Jews and free Moors who refused baptism, including all those unfortunates who, banished from Spain in 1492 by the Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella, had fled to Portugal thinking to find in that country a refuge from the intolerance and tyranny of Castile. In October, 1497, the marriage of King Emmanuel of Portugal with the princess Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, and widow of Prince Alfonso, son of João II, took place in the town of Valencia de Alcantara.
It seemed at first that Dom Emmanuel’s lucky star would not abandon him in his relations with Castile. Indeed the kings of Portugal and Castile were still at Valencia de Alcantara when they received the news of the unfortunate death of the prince Don Juan, heir to the crown of Castile. By this event Doña Isabella, queen of Portugal, wife of Dom Emmanuel, became heir presumptive to the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Leon. This fact, which plunged the kingdoms of Spain in consternation, filled Dom Emmanuel with joy and promised to satisfy his ambitions more promptly than could have been expected.
But his wife was advanced in pregnancy. In spite of her state, she resolved to continue her journey and go to Saragossa to be sworn heir to the throne of Aragon. Here she was seized with the pains of child-birth, and on the 24th of August, 1498, brought forth the infante Dom Miguel, in that city, his birth costing his mother her life. And Miguel died two years later.
Thus the dream of Dom Emmanuel vanished like smoke. The famous expulsion of the Jews and New Christians, an iniquitous measure, unwise and unpolitic, price of the marriage with Doña Isabella, was not a happy augury. Once more the attempt at an Iberian union under the sceptre of a Portuguese king by matrimonial means had failed.
Dom Emmanuel did not completely lose hope in his relations with Castile[162] by the death of his wife and son. The Catholic sovereigns also seemed determined on an alliance with Portugal. Without loss of time, in the same year, 1500, Dom Emmanuel sent Ruy de Saude, of his council, as ambassador to the sovereigns of Castile with full powers to request the hand of the infanta Doña Maria, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and consequently sister-in-law of the king of Portugal. The heirs to the crown of Castile were Doña Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and her husband, son of the emperor Maximilian and the empress Mary of Burgundy. The princess of Castile had already a son at that time, Charles, who was born at Ghent in Belgium on the 24th of February, 1500, and was afterwards Charles I of Spain and V of Germany. Queen Isabella died on the 25th of November, 1504, and King Ferdinand on the 23rd of January, 1516. The throne of Castile was lost to Dom Emmanuel. The crown of Spain was about to pass to the house of Austria. The wedding to Maria nevertheless took place at Alcacer-do-Sal on the 30th of October, 1500.
[1504-1520 A.D.]
In the same year, 1500, Gaspar Cortereal went to North America and discovered the land of Labrador, which was then called Cortereal, getting beyond 50° north latitude. He returned to Portugal, and repeated his voyage in 1501, but was never heard of again. His brother, Miguel, went in search of him, but he also disappeared. Other lands and islands were discovered in the time of Queen Maria. In 1501, João da Nova,[163] on his voyage to India, discovered the Ascension Island in the Atlantic, and the island which bears his name on the coast of Africa. On his return journey in 1502 he discovered the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic. The Florentine Amerigo Vespucci made voyages to America by order of Dom Emmanuel in 1501 and 1503, discovering Rio de la Plata and Patagonia. This navigator had the glory of giving his name to the group of lands discovered by Columbus, Cabral, etc. In 1506 were successively discovered: by Tristan da Cunha, the islands of that name in the Atlantic; by Ruy Pereira Coutinho and Fernão Soares, the western and eastern coasts of the island of Madagascar; in 1507, the Maldive Islands by Dom Lourenço de Almeida; in 1509, by Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, Malacca (Malay Peninsula) and Sumatra; in 1512, by Francisco Serrão, the Molucca Islands in the Chinese seas; in 1513, by Pedro Mascarenhas, the island to which he gave his name and which is at present called Réunion, in the Indian Ocean; in 1516, Duarte Coelho discovered Cochin-China; in 1517, Fernão Peres de Andrade went to China.[k]
THE GREAT VOYAGE OF MAGELLAN
The celebrated line of demarcation between the right of discovery and conquest was not so clearly understood as to avoid disputes between Dom Emmanuel and his brother sovereign of Castile. His splendid empire in the East had long attracted the jealousy of Ferdinand, who had frequently attempted, but as frequently been deterred by his remonstrances, to share in the rich commercial advantages thus offered to the sister kingdom. After the death of that prince, a disaffected Portuguese who had served Emmanuel with distinction both in Ethiopia and India, and who was disgusted with the refusal of his sovereign to reward his services with becoming liberality, fled into Castile, and told the new king, Charles V of Austria, that the Molucca Islands, in virtue of that line, rightfully belonged to Spain. This man was Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães), whose name is immortalised in the annals of maritime discovery. He proposed a shorter route to the Moluccas than the passage by the Cape of Good Hope—the route by Brazil: he well knew that the American continent must terminate somewhere, and his notion of the earth’s rotundity was sufficiently just to convince him that a western voyage would bring him to the same point as the one discovered by Dias and Vasco da Gama. In August, 1519, he embarked at Seville, with five vessels, over the crews of which he was invested with the power of life and death. On reaching the Brazilian coast, he cautiously proceeded southwards, and in September, 1520, arriving at a cape which he called after the Eleven Thousand Virgins, he passed into the dreaded straits which bear his name. After a passage of fifteen hundred leagues, unexampled for its boldness, he reached the Philippine Islands. Here closed his extraordinary career in 1521. Though the object of the expedition failed, through the catastrophe of its leader, he will be considered by posterity as by far the most undaunted, and in many respects the most extraordinary man that ever traversed an unknown sea.[e]