[1523-1535 A.D.]
The long reign of João exhibits interminable contests in India and Africa. Their details would be perused with little interest by an English reader. They can be noticed in so far only as they affect the general state of the monarchy. During these transactions in the East, Morocco continued to be the sanguinary theatre of the worst human passions. On the one hand the Portuguese were eager to extend their possessions; on the other, the sherifs, exulting in their successful ambition, were not less so to free the country from so troublesome an enemy. From the accession of the new dynasty, the affairs of the Portuguese began to decline. Indicative of the ambitious schemes which they had formed, the sherifs assumed the title of emperors of Africa: the elder, Hamed, remaining at Morocco; the younger, Muhammed, occupying the more western provinces.
To the king of Fez this assumption was not less odious than it was to the Portuguese themselves. That on one occasion the sherif, with four thousand horse, was signally defeated by a Portuguese noble with one hundred and forty, is gravely asserted; victories equally improbable, we may add equally impossible, occur at every step in the Portuguese relations concerning the wars of their countrymen with the misbelievers. But what, we are told, could not be effected by valour was done by fortune. Considering the war which he had to support in India, and his want of troops, João took the extraordinary resolution of dismantling four of his African fortresses, Arzilla, Saphin, Asemmur, Alcacer-Seguier, and of abandoning the ruins to the enemy. This resolution was carried into effect; but that this was owing as much to the arms of the sherif as to the motives will be admitted by every reader except a Portuguese.[c]
The oriental empire of Portugal, however, continued to increase by the wars which the able statesmen and warriors, whom João sent out as viceroys and governors, waged, upon the most frivolous pretexts, against the different neighbouring princes. They took advantage of the dissensions of the princes of the Moluccas, to obtain the complete sovereignty of those valuable islands. The disorders provoked by the tyranny and consequent assassination of the sultans of Cambay enabled them to wrest from those monarchs the important fortress and city of Diu; and similar convulsions in the Deccan gave them opportunities of considerably extending the Portuguese dominions in that wealthy country. It is to be observed, however, that the sovereigns, thus lawlessly despoiled, were themselves equally lawless conquerors. They were the chiefs of the Mohammedan hordes, who had overrun India, overthrown the native princes, and oppressed the Hindus. The enslaved natives probably cared little for the expulsion of one foreign master by another, if they had not cause to rejoice at exchanging the wantonly cruel tyranny of oriental despots for the more orderly extortion and oppression of a civilised people.
The increase of the power of the Portuguese now alarmed all the Mohammedan potentates, and they applied to Constantinople for assistance to expel the Christian intruders. Again the request was enforced by a Christian power, Venice, whose jealousy of the Portuguese rivals of her own commercial greatness extinguished all nobler feeling, all religious sympathy. Suleiman, thus doubly urged, equipped a powerful armament in the Red Sea, which, proceeding to the Indian Ocean, joined the Cambayan forces in besieging Diu. The defence, first by Antonio de Silveira, and afterwards by João de Mascarenhas, of this place, or rather of the fortress, for the town and rest of the island were quickly abandoned as untenable, ranks amongst the most celebrated feats of the Portuguese in India. They repulsed incessant assaults, the women labouring day and night at the fortifications, and venturing into the posts of greatest danger, to carry every needful assistance to the combatants, who, from their scanty numbers, could hardly ever quit the walls. During both sieges, the place was reduced to the utmost extremity; and upon both occasions was relieved by the seasonable appearance of the viceroy with a powerful fleet.
Of the viceroys and governors who effected these acquisitions scarcely one was duly recompensed. Many died in poverty, and Nuño da Cunha, who gained Diu for King João, was only saved by death from being dragged in chains to the foot of his ungrateful master’s throne. During João’s reign, the celebrated apostle of India, St. Francis Xavier, visited that country to attempt the conversion of the idolatrous natives: and the Portuguese obtained an establishment in China, and a free trade with Japan.
[1531-1562 A.D.]
Brazil first acquired importance under João III. In 1531 he began the colonisation of that immense empire, then little more than a long line of seacoast. This he divided into several captaincies, which he granted, with large powers of jurisdiction, civil and criminal, to such persons as, upon those conditions, were willing to settle there, and to people and cultivate their respective grants. The French made various attempts to form rival settlements in Brazil, especially about Rio de Janeiro. They never obtained more than temporary possession of any part of the country.[d]
The greatest credit that can be given to João III is that he kept his country out of all European complications, a task made comparatively easy by his close alliance with the greatest monarch in Europe, Charles V. This alliance was sealed by three marriages: for King João was married to the infanta Catherine, the sister of Charles V; his only son, Dom João, was married to the infanta Juana, daughter of Charles V; and his only daughter, Donna Maria, was the first wife of Philip, prince of the Asturias, the eldest son of Charles V, and afterwards King Philip II.[e]
João died in 1557. By his queen, Catherine, he had several male children, of whom none emerged from their infancy except João. Nor did that infante survive the father. In 1553 he received the hand of Juana, daughter of the emperor; but he died in the third month of his marriage, leaving the princess pregnant of a son, afterwards the unfortunate Dom Sebastian. Of João’s brothers one only, the cardinal Henry, whom he had vainly endeavoured to place in the chair of St. Peter, survived him. As his sister Isabella was the mother of the Spanish monarch, the connection between the royal families of the two kingdoms was, as we shall soon see, fatal to the independence of Portugal. As Sebastian, on the death of his grandfather, was only three years of age, the regency, in conformity with the will of the late king, was vested in the widowed queen, Catherine of Austria. In a few years, however, being disgusted with the intrigues of Cardinal Henry, who aspired to the direction of affairs, she resigned it in his favour.[c]